Books for Abdoulaye

Front and center

While the US government spins around in circles over ridiculous arguments about money allotment, think about my student Abdoulaye. Abdoulaye is a 15-year-old 8th grader. He's a quiet kid, but every trimester since arriving in middle school, he has been the first in his class. He hopes to study abroad in Canada or America someday before coming back to Burkina Faso to be a teacher, or maybe an economist for the government. For now, he belongs to a poor family of subsistence farmers in my village, and he spent all of his summer vacation helping his family work in the fields. The entire family lives off of less than $20 a month. He would be the first person in his family to hold even a middle-school diploma. As it is, anytime he wants to know something, he has to ask a teacher or other adult, and is thus limited to what they know and what they take the time to tell him. My village has no library or other publicly available repository of information, and the nearest one is in Kaya, the regional capital, which he can get to only by a 20-mile bike ride on a terrible road.

I am raising money for a library at my school. If you think about all the necessary basic supplies at your local high school--pens, paper, books, a computer, a printer and photocopier--out of those things, all we have is...pens and paper. We already have a library room with bookshelves, but the only books in it are useless cobwebby out-of-date textbooks that the school didn't have any other place for. With this grant, we will go a long way toward having an adequate setup for a school that's beyond the 17th century.

Some things that grant money will go toward:
- 400 books for the library
- book label cards and library membership cards
- a solar panel and electric hookup
- a laptop computer
- a photocopier (can you imagine a school without a photocopier?? I can)
- a printer
- tables and chairs
- pedagogic materials (books or other supplies) for teachers
- a hand washing station outside the library to promote hygiene and book maintenance
- materials to paint a mural with a world map and other artwork on the outside walls

The school has already chosen a librarian and has set aside money for his training, which will be done through an NGO called FAVL (Friends of African Village Libraries), as well as his first year's salary. With the backing of the mayor's office, we hope to broaden the base of financial support for the library in the coming years to ensure its growth over time.

Books at the library will include textbooks, of which there is a serious insufficiency at the school, as well as picture books to encourage literacy in French, English, and local languages; African and other literature in French and local languages; dictionaries; reference books; and books with relevant career-related information on topics like agriculture, animal husbandry, and masonry. The library is primarily for the school, but it will be open to the entire community as well. We will seek input from students and interested community members before we go to purchase books. With the backing of the parents' association and the mayor's office, the collection will grow in the future to better meet the community's needs.

To do all these things, we need to raise $6,096, and that's where we need your support. We can't get started until we raise that entire sum, and if we don't, you'll get all your money back. Once we do get it, expenses are very closely monitored, so you know it's all being used exactly as it should be. Donations are 100% tax-deductible and come with a guarantee of warm fuzzy feelings from having measurably improved someone's life.

Think about what a difference this will make in the lives of Abdoulaye and his 700+ classmates. Not only will his school function more smoothly, but he will also suddenly have access to a huge range of information that he could never dream of now. For the first time, he will have books available to him that he can read out of sheer personal interest. If he wants to improve his English, he'll be able to look up words in a French-English dictionary, which he couldn't buy in village even if he had the money for it. Plus, he'll have a lighted space to study in the evenings, whereas many students are currently forced to do homework by firelight after dark since the village has no electricity.

In America, we can argue about spending money on the military, or on a new car or a new pair of designer shoes. On the other hand, is there any doubting the value of a library that will serve the future of over 700 underprivileged students? It's hard to think of spending more meaningful than that.

UPDATE: fundraising goals met. Thank you everyone!!!

Crocodile lake

Burkinabe mythology states that because humans and crocodiles share the same spirit, sacred crocodiles won't harm humans. Burkina has two lakes famous for their sacred crocodiles, one in a village called Bazoulé and the other in Sabou. My brother Jeremy came to visit me for the past two weeks, and we went to Bazoulé to investigate. Do the crocodiles really know not to eat humans, or are they just too full from all the chickens that tourists keep feeding them to bother with larger game? You'll have to answer that for yourself.

You can sit on grandpa crocodile

You can pick up his tail, too

More Burkinabe mythology surrounding crocodiles: the crocodile was once an underwater animal like the fish. He wanted to come out of the water to sun himself on land, but he didn't know how to walk. A pig taught his crocodile friend how to use his paws. Upon mastering the art of walking, the crocodile ate the pig. To this day, crocodiles are ungrateful and continue to eat pigs.

A bad day to be a chicken

rawr

The lake is right in the middle of the village's fields, and crocodiles roam around and through the rice paddies where people work. There are over 100 crocodiles in the lake, and kids run right up to the water to look at them. Ultimately, the crocodile lake was similar to many situations in Burkina--moderately dangerous, but you'll probably be okay, but there's no safety rail. Don't get eaten.

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Coming soon: I ask you for money!

Science Camp

Last week, I saw a group of 80-pound preteen girls each demolish the most mountainous plates of rice I had ever seen. Then they went back for seconds. Then they looked through a microscope for the first time in their lives, after having studied them and memorized the names of all their parts over the past school year without ever having had the opportunity to see the real thing in person. 5 volunteers and I had organized a science camp for 7th and 8th grade students, and 36 girls and boys spent 5 days learning the scientific method and doing hands-on experiments covering topics they learned about in their science and physics class, but never got to observe for themselves.

Mountainous plates of rice

Session topics included optics, circuits, ecology, dissection, astronomy, and water purification methods, among others. Students also had an hour each day to work on a science fair project, in which each group was assigned a question like "how does fire change air pressure?" They received assigned materials, such as a candle, matches, water, and a container, and they had to figure out how to use the materials to demonstrate the principle, then present it to the rest of the participants on the last day.

Jean doing "Science"

The whole thing went amazingly smoothly. I was impressed by the quality of the students, especially the girls. Class participation is normally dominated by boys, but the females really took charge this time. Each volunteer brought a Burkinabe counterpart, another science teacher from their school, with them, and for mine, I brought a physics/chemistry teacher from my school named Jean. I knew Jean was really motivated, but still I was impressed at how well he did with controlling classrooms and giving clear explanations that combined with student participation.

Field trip

In the end, I think the students really appreciated the opportunity for hands-on learning, which is a huge departure for the style of education in Burkina that focuses on rote memorization and note taking. For me, it was a huge relief to work with motivated students in manageable class sizes. It was an inspiration for the coming year. Classes start in less than 2 weeks, so here we go!

Frog dissection

Chicken dissection/dinner preparation

Speed Bumps

I recently came back from a trip to Ghana with several other PCBF (that’s Peace Corps Burkina Faso) volunteers. On the whole it was a nice trip, the best part of it being the time spent with people I like in a place nicer than Burkina. We had to change our plans several times at the last minute because of national safety and security concerns, which ended up shortening the trip considerably, but still, 3 days on the beach is better than no days on the beach.

Volunteers who preceded me in Burkina talked up Ghana, a lot. It was described as “where Burkina will be in 50 years,” “Burkina, but done right,” “Africa’s success story,” etc. It’s true that it was way nicer than Burkina. I didn’t see the villages much, but even smaller cities that we drove through were much nicer than Ouagadougou, and the amount of construction suggested that they’re continuing to develop rapidly. Ghana reminded me of Costa Rica in a lot of ways, as far as I imagine/remember it from 12 years ago. At the same time, after hearing so much about Ghana, I was starting to imagine some wonderland where everything worked right, but the reality is, it’s still West Africa.

Local fishing village

The West Africa deal hit me, literally, pretty shortly after we crossed the border. The 5 of us traveling together took a big bus (air conditioned, well-maintained, and not overbooked: my dreams come true), and we took up the entire back row. Sitting in the back was fine and dandy until we arrived in Ghana, when we hit the speed bumps. I’ll say it: West Africa does not know how to do speed bumps. They had 2 varieties in Ghana: big speed bumps reminiscent of hippopotami in both dimension and aggressiveness, and “rumble strips” that felt like someone had knocked over 3 large telephone poles and decided to leave them in a row on the street. The driver slowed almost to a halt for every speed bump, but even so, the hippopotamus speed bumps actually knocked my butt into the air on at least 3 occasions. We left Ouaga at around 9 am, so we were in Ghana, speed bumpin’, from around 2 pm until we arrived in Kumasi at 1 am. They had speed bumps in every city and village that we passed through, which in the end meant another set of them at least once every 15 minutes for the whole 11 hours.

Something that I reflect on from time to time is where Africa would be right now if not for colonization. Ghana made me think about that particularly, since the general consensus among West Africans seems to be that the English were the best colonizers. On their own, would West Africans eventually have unified themselves into some society better off than today’s countries? Or would they have continued like many people in rural Burkina, concerning themselves with nothing more than farming and millet beer, and living essentially in ignorance of anything more than a day’s walk away? In the end, was slavery and subjugation worth it as a price for Westernized development?

In terms of concepts that Europeans introduced to Africa, Burkina only seems to have gotten the “what” without the “why” or the “how.” It seems like Ghana got the “what” and the “why” down—they have speed bumps, and they were placed logically to slow people down. The “how,” though, was still lacking. Westerners came in and told the people what they had to do so they could be a part of their kingdom, then left.  But as for teaching why and how to use those tools to keep moving forward? In the end, West Africa is just left with a bunch of horrible speed bumps.

Puppy

Other observations of Ghana: they are really into funerals. Every village that we passed through had a huge display of coffins on sale. Not only did they have your run-of-the-mill fancy coffins; there were also coffins shaped as roosters, rockets (to shoot you straight to heaven) (?), bibles, cocoa pods, and much more. I’m sure you could get one custom made if you wanted. Also notable were the names painted on all shop fronts and on vehicles. Memorably, “Satan Lies Enterprises,” “Jesus is King Spaghetti,” and, on a taxi, “What a Mother!” 

Jeanine, Natalya, Norm, Mariko, Matt, Steve, Christina, Royce.