It's funny, having personal and serious and heartfelt phone conersations with children gathered around to watch you. You don't understand what I'm saying, do ya kids?
Heartfelt. My heart is feeling lots of things these days.
Our Secondary Education director passed away this week. He was a wonderful man. He was so incredibly integral in getting the ball moving on my move out of the castle and down to my new neighborhood. Without him I might still be up there. And he wasn't even my director. Thoughtful, personable, helpful. Only 40 years old. Rest in peace, Seb.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Some call it fun but some may call it classes
Sometimes classes go well, and sometimes they don’t.
But I really don’t stress about it.
Because I’m confident of my place at the school and I’m confident in my ability to guide children and teenagers and I am confident in the importance of not only what I am doing but more importantly the methods with which I am doing it. And whether or not they deserve it I have confidence in my girls’ abilities to accept that some days are harder than others and that things don’t always go well and that it’s not the end of the world.
Part of that comes from being in Burkina Faso, where part of the general attitude that one has is that some days, if not most, ARE hard, and things don’t always go well and often don’t go as planned and it never really is the end of the world. So I’ve adopted this attitude concerning many things through the course of my being here, and I assume that the girls, through the courses of their being here, have it going on, too.
I also play by the innocent until proven guilty playbook, assuming that these older-kids/young-adults will be reasonable and respectful and leaving the burden of upholding this trust to them.
One of the most impressionable moments I had as the assistant director of my summer camp the year before coming out to Burkina was being called in to help handle a unit-wide dispute. Girls being disrespectful, making each other cry, not listening to their exasperated counselors…not a fun way for anyone to spend a week in the woods.
I came in one afternoon after lunch—silly Molly, who’d been a counselor they’d hoped to have in their units for as long as any of them had been coming to camp, whose wacky tacky day apparel couldn’t possibly be wackier, who sings all sorts of camp songs with true conviction and dances at all-camps and plays games at the dinner table and reads bedtime stories and is just so well-loved by everyone. I sat down on a picnic table incredibly seriously, and I looked all twenty of those girls in the eyes and told them that I was not happy with them. Quiet. I told them I was hurt by the hurtful things that they were doing to each other, that I was disappointed in them, and that I did not want to ever have to come into their unit and speak with them like this again. …and they were silent. We’re being so bad that Molly’s mad at us? Shame. And they listened as their counselors took back the reins and helped them come up with plans for solving their disputes.
I didn’t need to do much. I didn’t need to struggle over power. My authority was there when I needed to use it, and was a pretty powerful weapon because I didn’t often wield it.
Teaching at my boarding school in Burkina is not the same as working at my summer camp in the woods of New England, but I find myself assuming the same sort of tactic here. The kids like me and I go with it, and I make them laugh and say silly things and have fun with them during class. And I am the adult in charge, but I don’t feel the need to have to state this directly unless the need arises.
It’s more fun when you’re smiling, dancing and singing along…especially when you get to do it up front.
But I really don’t stress about it.
Because I’m confident of my place at the school and I’m confident in my ability to guide children and teenagers and I am confident in the importance of not only what I am doing but more importantly the methods with which I am doing it. And whether or not they deserve it I have confidence in my girls’ abilities to accept that some days are harder than others and that things don’t always go well and that it’s not the end of the world.
Part of that comes from being in Burkina Faso, where part of the general attitude that one has is that some days, if not most, ARE hard, and things don’t always go well and often don’t go as planned and it never really is the end of the world. So I’ve adopted this attitude concerning many things through the course of my being here, and I assume that the girls, through the courses of their being here, have it going on, too.
I also play by the innocent until proven guilty playbook, assuming that these older-kids/young-adults will be reasonable and respectful and leaving the burden of upholding this trust to them.
One of the most impressionable moments I had as the assistant director of my summer camp the year before coming out to Burkina was being called in to help handle a unit-wide dispute. Girls being disrespectful, making each other cry, not listening to their exasperated counselors…not a fun way for anyone to spend a week in the woods.
I came in one afternoon after lunch—silly Molly, who’d been a counselor they’d hoped to have in their units for as long as any of them had been coming to camp, whose wacky tacky day apparel couldn’t possibly be wackier, who sings all sorts of camp songs with true conviction and dances at all-camps and plays games at the dinner table and reads bedtime stories and is just so well-loved by everyone. I sat down on a picnic table incredibly seriously, and I looked all twenty of those girls in the eyes and told them that I was not happy with them. Quiet. I told them I was hurt by the hurtful things that they were doing to each other, that I was disappointed in them, and that I did not want to ever have to come into their unit and speak with them like this again. …and they were silent. We’re being so bad that Molly’s mad at us? Shame. And they listened as their counselors took back the reins and helped them come up with plans for solving their disputes.
I didn’t need to do much. I didn’t need to struggle over power. My authority was there when I needed to use it, and was a pretty powerful weapon because I didn’t often wield it.
Teaching at my boarding school in Burkina is not the same as working at my summer camp in the woods of New England, but I find myself assuming the same sort of tactic here. The kids like me and I go with it, and I make them laugh and say silly things and have fun with them during class. And I am the adult in charge, but I don’t feel the need to have to state this directly unless the need arises.
It’s more fun when you’re smiling, dancing and singing along…especially when you get to do it up front.
Lexicon
“Tantie” is what the cuisinaire girls often call me. Tantie, a word most normally used by young children to refer to adult women, often generically at the insistence of their parents (As in, “Shake hands with Tantie,” to the wide-eyed, frightened one-year-old gawking at the scary colorless ghost person hovering above them. Me.) It also a word to describe large women, the sort that look like they could hit diva-esque notes. (As in, “I could barely breathe on that three hour bush taxi ride to Ouahigouya, squished in back between two tanties.”) It also serves as a kind of in-between word in my world up here on the boarding school castle, when students and younger girls want to display respect to women who are not necessarily in strict authority positions, such as the teachers and the nuns are. A very large number of the twelve-, fourteen-, sixteen-year-old students call the cuisinaire girls (many of whom are sixteen-year-olds themselves) Tantie. A casual, familiar respect. A non-familial “auntie”…pretty much exactly what it sounds like.
Marie, my cuisinaire friend who is twenty-two, calls me Tantie, always with a smile twinkling in her wide round eyes. She and the newest addition to the cuisinaire bunch (so recent I’m not even sure of her name yet) had run into me by the gate this evening when I was leaving my final class. It was dark; it had rained for almost an hour an hour before. My silly sandal had broken…the bit that goes between your big toe and all the others (a feeling I have not always been willing to tolerate) had popped out. For the second time. The other one had broken once, too. Both sides had been repaired with some hardcore needle and thread sewn through the plastic. The current broken shoe had also once been repaired through an amateur attempt at melting and welding done by yours truly in a stunning display of fire safety negligence. Every attempt at pushing it back in this time for my rocky walk down the hill and across the muddy path that cuts through the millet field and snakes behind my quartier to my house was thwarted. Rah. So I took off my shoes and was prepared to walk pied nu, like all of the children of this country are accustomed to doing.
But Marie and friend caught me standing on the wet rocks near the gate with sandals in hand. “Tantie! What are you doing? Your feet will hurt! There’s too much mud! Take my shoes! I have another pair. Tomorrow you can give them back to me.” And she bent down to remove her oft-repaired pair of sandals and hand them to me as we stood on the rocky ground. She gave me the shoes off her feet.
How many people would do that?
Marie, my cuisinaire friend who is twenty-two, calls me Tantie, always with a smile twinkling in her wide round eyes. She and the newest addition to the cuisinaire bunch (so recent I’m not even sure of her name yet) had run into me by the gate this evening when I was leaving my final class. It was dark; it had rained for almost an hour an hour before. My silly sandal had broken…the bit that goes between your big toe and all the others (a feeling I have not always been willing to tolerate) had popped out. For the second time. The other one had broken once, too. Both sides had been repaired with some hardcore needle and thread sewn through the plastic. The current broken shoe had also once been repaired through an amateur attempt at melting and welding done by yours truly in a stunning display of fire safety negligence. Every attempt at pushing it back in this time for my rocky walk down the hill and across the muddy path that cuts through the millet field and snakes behind my quartier to my house was thwarted. Rah. So I took off my shoes and was prepared to walk pied nu, like all of the children of this country are accustomed to doing.
But Marie and friend caught me standing on the wet rocks near the gate with sandals in hand. “Tantie! What are you doing? Your feet will hurt! There’s too much mud! Take my shoes! I have another pair. Tomorrow you can give them back to me.” And she bent down to remove her oft-repaired pair of sandals and hand them to me as we stood on the rocky ground. She gave me the shoes off her feet.
How many people would do that?
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Not so bad sometimes
Regarding the rough time I’ve been having as of late…my daddio suggested (jokingly?) that maybe me washing my hair would help wash some of the blah away. So I figured, what the heck…filled my bucket up extra full the other day and brought some shampoo sheets (weird travel things found at the Transit House and my only current source of hair wash) into my latrine to scrub down nice and thorough-like. And voilà! All better.
Well, it hasn’t been that easy…but things are looking up.
Well, it hasn’t been that easy…but things are looking up.
October 4th update
I’ve been having a rough little while lately. Pretty stressed out, unable always to immediately find good ways to calm down or chill out before getting overwhelmed, though I have been trying. Things have been looking up the past couple of days, fortunately…there’s a light at the end of this particular tunnel, perhaps. Today in fact was quite busy and good. I shall describe it to you.
After celebrating a particularly wonderful Sandwich Day yesterday (which consisted of, among other things, eating three delicious sandwiches as well as a not-terrible bar of chocolate, having a delicious and winding conversation about life and love and plans and ideas, and watching several episodes of 30 Rock), I awoke bright and early for a yummy cup of creamy coffee (instant) and a short bike ride through town (necessary). The air had lingering wisps of nighttime cool in it still, and the town was full of activity as many school aged children on bikes and à pied were convening at the various primary schools, collèges and lycées for (what people say is) the first day of classes (but what really amounts to students showing up to empty rooms and waiting around for a while before going home for the day; rinse and repeat for at least a week).
At the homestead I took a bucket bath to rinse some of the grime off of my bod, then put on clean clothes and went up to my school where I got my revised computer class/exam proctoring schedule for the year. All my classes (5 hours, woop) are on Wednesdays, and I am only scheduled to proctor exams on Monday afternoons. What will I be doing the rest of the time? Well let me tell you.
I’m helping out with baby weighing/vaccinations in my sector’s CSPS (health center) on Monday and Friday mornings. The head of the health center is on board with reaching out to local schools to see what kind of health stuff they could use help with, so after school kicks into some real working gear I’m going to be a little bit aggressive with that. For the moment, I show up around 7:30 or 8:00am and help to hang babies on a scale by putting them in a sort of little thin canvas bag with leg holes (adorable) and drop little drops of polio into their mouths (oral vaccination…bye bye polio!). I then hang around and chat with the nurses or sit in on any formations that are going on. I usually put up with some level of harassment and commentary about me not having a husband, and how I should really have a baby, and wouldn’t I like to go home with a baby as a souvenir of my time in Burkina?, and about how I should cook lunch for all of them because I’m a woman and they’re men, and ha ha ha. But I enjoy my time there for the most part (and often have no trouble figuring out when it’s time for me to leave).
Today several people from my quartier were at the CSPS sick with various things—malaria for two, a wild bumpy rash sore thing for one lil’ child—so I visited for a while as well, which I always think must really tire out the sick folks being visited who sit up with great effort from where they were laying on a mat on the ground to shake hands and exchange greetings, but that’s just the way it goes.
One of the patients I visited was the son of a woman who has proclaimed herself to be my adopted mother (actually, her children claimed it for her). This is a family full of wonderful people—from oldest son to youngest daughter, I enjoy being in the company of each, and often spend my evenings in their courtyard talking about the day and preparing tô.
At around 10:30 I headed home where I immediately set to work washing dishes that I had left sitting in my dish basin for way too long. Bleach was involved. After this, riding high on a wave of productivity, I grabbed my bike and two bidons and headed across my little village to get water from the faucet by the boutique. Obnoxious “helpful” comments and suggestions from a teenage girl along the way about where I should be getting my water and how I should be transporting it didn’t do any permanent damage to my cheery outlook on life as I strapped my faucet- (not well-) filled containers to my bike and walked (not rode, as if in this skirt yeah right brat) it home to do laundry.
Laundry laundry laundry in the shade created on my terrace by my house (no hangar yet), then hung up to dry. Lunch came next, spaghetti and cream sauce (onions, garlic, tomato, milk, vache qui rit, flour, water, spicy peppers) and water with lime, sweated off ten pounds while making/eating that. Rest time. Sprawled out on a pagne on a mat on my floor to close my eyes, reopening them every time children’s voices came in through my door to ask me for water. Yeessssssssssss, I will keep you hydrated. Here you go, now go away I am sleeping. …but I didn’t sleep, just read a bit of book and was startled into complete consciousness by gentle rolls of thunder which I thought might translate into rain but didn’t, anyhow it got me going with some stuff-packing, my laptop and notebook and journal into my backpack to bring up to my school to work a little, write a little, and suggest to my directrice that I come in for study hours tonight to discuss how one studies with the newest class of little angels.
So that’s where I am now, sitting in the teacher’s room of my school, business day done, notes for my evening’s discussion on study skills jotted down in my notebook by my side. I have to plan another class for Wednesday but I’ll do that either later tonight or tomorrow. Right now I’m going to go talk to my cuisinaire ladies to give them an update on our cours de soir (another thing I will be doing this year). I think we’ll meet twice a week, probably Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. On Monday evenings, I’ve been coming up to the school to sit with the students during their study hours. I gave a little pep talk/presentation on study methods to the youngest class the other evening during this time. Add to my schedule the fact that I’ll be typing exams secretary-style to help out from time to time, like last year.
All the stuff I’ve got penciled in weekly along with the stuff that’ll come up here and there feels really good when seen on paper. Here’s to a busy, happy year.
After celebrating a particularly wonderful Sandwich Day yesterday (which consisted of, among other things, eating three delicious sandwiches as well as a not-terrible bar of chocolate, having a delicious and winding conversation about life and love and plans and ideas, and watching several episodes of 30 Rock), I awoke bright and early for a yummy cup of creamy coffee (instant) and a short bike ride through town (necessary). The air had lingering wisps of nighttime cool in it still, and the town was full of activity as many school aged children on bikes and à pied were convening at the various primary schools, collèges and lycées for (what people say is) the first day of classes (but what really amounts to students showing up to empty rooms and waiting around for a while before going home for the day; rinse and repeat for at least a week).
At the homestead I took a bucket bath to rinse some of the grime off of my bod, then put on clean clothes and went up to my school where I got my revised computer class/exam proctoring schedule for the year. All my classes (5 hours, woop) are on Wednesdays, and I am only scheduled to proctor exams on Monday afternoons. What will I be doing the rest of the time? Well let me tell you.
I’m helping out with baby weighing/vaccinations in my sector’s CSPS (health center) on Monday and Friday mornings. The head of the health center is on board with reaching out to local schools to see what kind of health stuff they could use help with, so after school kicks into some real working gear I’m going to be a little bit aggressive with that. For the moment, I show up around 7:30 or 8:00am and help to hang babies on a scale by putting them in a sort of little thin canvas bag with leg holes (adorable) and drop little drops of polio into their mouths (oral vaccination…bye bye polio!). I then hang around and chat with the nurses or sit in on any formations that are going on. I usually put up with some level of harassment and commentary about me not having a husband, and how I should really have a baby, and wouldn’t I like to go home with a baby as a souvenir of my time in Burkina?, and about how I should cook lunch for all of them because I’m a woman and they’re men, and ha ha ha. But I enjoy my time there for the most part (and often have no trouble figuring out when it’s time for me to leave).
Today several people from my quartier were at the CSPS sick with various things—malaria for two, a wild bumpy rash sore thing for one lil’ child—so I visited for a while as well, which I always think must really tire out the sick folks being visited who sit up with great effort from where they were laying on a mat on the ground to shake hands and exchange greetings, but that’s just the way it goes.
One of the patients I visited was the son of a woman who has proclaimed herself to be my adopted mother (actually, her children claimed it for her). This is a family full of wonderful people—from oldest son to youngest daughter, I enjoy being in the company of each, and often spend my evenings in their courtyard talking about the day and preparing tô.
At around 10:30 I headed home where I immediately set to work washing dishes that I had left sitting in my dish basin for way too long. Bleach was involved. After this, riding high on a wave of productivity, I grabbed my bike and two bidons and headed across my little village to get water from the faucet by the boutique. Obnoxious “helpful” comments and suggestions from a teenage girl along the way about where I should be getting my water and how I should be transporting it didn’t do any permanent damage to my cheery outlook on life as I strapped my faucet- (not well-) filled containers to my bike and walked (not rode, as if in this skirt yeah right brat) it home to do laundry.
Laundry laundry laundry in the shade created on my terrace by my house (no hangar yet), then hung up to dry. Lunch came next, spaghetti and cream sauce (onions, garlic, tomato, milk, vache qui rit, flour, water, spicy peppers) and water with lime, sweated off ten pounds while making/eating that. Rest time. Sprawled out on a pagne on a mat on my floor to close my eyes, reopening them every time children’s voices came in through my door to ask me for water. Yeessssssssssss, I will keep you hydrated. Here you go, now go away I am sleeping. …but I didn’t sleep, just read a bit of book and was startled into complete consciousness by gentle rolls of thunder which I thought might translate into rain but didn’t, anyhow it got me going with some stuff-packing, my laptop and notebook and journal into my backpack to bring up to my school to work a little, write a little, and suggest to my directrice that I come in for study hours tonight to discuss how one studies with the newest class of little angels.
So that’s where I am now, sitting in the teacher’s room of my school, business day done, notes for my evening’s discussion on study skills jotted down in my notebook by my side. I have to plan another class for Wednesday but I’ll do that either later tonight or tomorrow. Right now I’m going to go talk to my cuisinaire ladies to give them an update on our cours de soir (another thing I will be doing this year). I think we’ll meet twice a week, probably Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. On Monday evenings, I’ve been coming up to the school to sit with the students during their study hours. I gave a little pep talk/presentation on study methods to the youngest class the other evening during this time. Add to my schedule the fact that I’ll be typing exams secretary-style to help out from time to time, like last year.
All the stuff I’ve got penciled in weekly along with the stuff that’ll come up here and there feels really good when seen on paper. Here’s to a busy, happy year.
Tom Maresco
A Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho named Thomas Maresco was killed on the third of September. He died as a result of a gunshot wound; the situation is being investigated. He was 24 years old. He is the third Peace Corps Volunteer to die since I accepted my invitation to serve almost three years ago.
I often think about Peace Corps service just becoming normal life after a while, and in a lot of ways it does. Novelty wears off and becomes routine. You wake up and do various things before eventually getting back in bed to start over the next day, just like anywhere else. But there are elements of risk present in our lives here, no matter where here may be. We get in accidents because we are adventurous by nature (why else would we have decided to turn down that desk job and move overseas?) …and because we live in countries with, among other things, no seat belts, speed limits, or regulations about nighttime headlight use. We get targeted because we are foreigners and that means, as much as we often pretend otherwise, that even if the money isn’t in our purse at the moment it’s worth a shot to take it anyway because we’ve got it somewhere. We get sick because it’s 100 degrees in our houses and after a morning of working in a field or a health center or a school dehydration can rob you of energy quicker than you realize, or the mosquitoes don’t care that you forgot to take your malaria pill one time a week ago, or you couldn’t in good faith refuse whatever seemingly innocuous food was offered to you by your sweet and caring neighbor earlier in the day.
One of the most important reasons I decided to join the Peace Corps was to represent my country. I wanted to be a positive example of an American for the world to see, especially during a time when our global reputation could use a little touching up. I wanted to spend two years somewhere and leave in my trail people who would say Ahh, America is made up of some pretty great people. There are days when I lead nothing, teach nothing, develop nothing, do nothing except be a good neighbor and share stories with friends and help cut vegetables and just be a good person.
Life is a fragile thing, and tragic accidents rob people of it everywhere in the world. It’s incredibly sad that the world has lost a smart, talented, interesting, thoughtful, creative, giving soul in Tom…I never met him and probably never would have, but I bet my living allowance that I described him accurately, because these are things I’ve found from my experience that all American Peace Corps Volunteers are.
I often think about Peace Corps service just becoming normal life after a while, and in a lot of ways it does. Novelty wears off and becomes routine. You wake up and do various things before eventually getting back in bed to start over the next day, just like anywhere else. But there are elements of risk present in our lives here, no matter where here may be. We get in accidents because we are adventurous by nature (why else would we have decided to turn down that desk job and move overseas?) …and because we live in countries with, among other things, no seat belts, speed limits, or regulations about nighttime headlight use. We get targeted because we are foreigners and that means, as much as we often pretend otherwise, that even if the money isn’t in our purse at the moment it’s worth a shot to take it anyway because we’ve got it somewhere. We get sick because it’s 100 degrees in our houses and after a morning of working in a field or a health center or a school dehydration can rob you of energy quicker than you realize, or the mosquitoes don’t care that you forgot to take your malaria pill one time a week ago, or you couldn’t in good faith refuse whatever seemingly innocuous food was offered to you by your sweet and caring neighbor earlier in the day.
One of the most important reasons I decided to join the Peace Corps was to represent my country. I wanted to be a positive example of an American for the world to see, especially during a time when our global reputation could use a little touching up. I wanted to spend two years somewhere and leave in my trail people who would say Ahh, America is made up of some pretty great people. There are days when I lead nothing, teach nothing, develop nothing, do nothing except be a good neighbor and share stories with friends and help cut vegetables and just be a good person.
Life is a fragile thing, and tragic accidents rob people of it everywhere in the world. It’s incredibly sad that the world has lost a smart, talented, interesting, thoughtful, creative, giving soul in Tom…I never met him and probably never would have, but I bet my living allowance that I described him accurately, because these are things I’ve found from my experience that all American Peace Corps Volunteers are.
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