Only in Africa

The day of a math test, a student approached me saying he couldn’t take the test. 

“Why?” I asked. 

He showed me his hand – his writing hand. 

Due to a parasite, it was swollen and black. He was partially correct. There was no way he could use his normal hand to write. 

I was faced with a decision. His hand may never get better. If that is the case, he will have to learn how to write with his other hand. 

“You are going to take the test.” I said. “Use your off hand and don’t worry about time or penmanship.

I told him he could finish the test at my house over lunch if he failed to finish on time. I gave him computer paper allowing him more space to work. He finished on time with a passing grade. Too tough? I think not.

Add parasites to the long list of obstacles facing education in Loumana:

1.      80+ kids per class

2.       Limited textbooks

3.       Classes taught in a second language

4.       Strikes

5.       No lights*

6.       Parasite infested limbs

*Working on solution in soon to be introduced solar panel project. Keep an eye out for it on my blog and Facebook in the near future.

The life of a chomeur (bum)

Classes have been suspended nationwide. I find myself suddenly unemployed. Yesterday I busied myself with cleaning my house. I think my house maintains an acceptable level of cleanliness. My visitors disagree. Funny, I had the same problem in college. 

Poignana and Pascaline wash clothes

I wonder why I get satisfaction in cleaning places I never see, touch, smell. Do I sense they are dirty? Does merely knowing the floor under my bed is littered with mouse poop keep me from a good night’s sleep? Do I better enjoy a book that comes from a shelf under which is clean and proper? I hope the answer is yes to all these questions because I labored in sweat all day cleaning places I never see. At the end of the day, my house pretty much looked the same. But I knew it was clean?

I didn’t even get to enjoy the clean floor under my real bed as I slept outside for the first time last night on my cot. The heat in a sun-baked, cement-walled, tin-roofed house has become unbearable. I will continue to sleep outside until the rainy season starts – May or June depending on the year. 

The air was cool and the stars bright sleeping on my porch- my new bedroom for the time being. Contentment and restfulness accompanied the rising sun erasing like fog nightmares of nocturnal scorpions and serpents. 

My neighbors were stirring at daybreak. Unfortunately, they are not equipped with a snooze button. Poignana swept the courtyard and Pascaline washed the dishes from the day before. The days of illegitimate children start early in village. Even now, my ragged clothed bastard neighbors are shining shoes, fetching wood, and have not yet finished washing the dishes. My well clothed legitimate neighbors heat water for Nescafe, play with the baby, and mix in sugar with a spoon that the illegitimate Pascaline just washed. My neighbor, the father of all the children, both ‘legit and not, only the former of which he finds the money to send to school, greeted me this morning in broken English. 

“I love you. You are kind.” He said with a chuckle. 

I don’t know if he understood what he said or was just saying what he could with his limited English. 

Regardless, this warm greeting made me cold. It’s not his fault really, it’s the injustice of it all that makes me sick. The world around groans for better days.

Cinema Burkina

So what does a bachelor of 23 do on the weekends in a village with no bars, let alone beer, no video games, let alone electricity, and no woman, at least none that are not married or one of his students?

This is a great question; the answer to which at least to me is at the same time amazing and depressing. At the very least it makes me smile. 

What I hope will be an enlightening introduction is in order. I hope that through this introduction, I can bridge the gap between African village life and America.

To you I present the Guru. 

The Guru is bottom-right.

The Guru is the senior of the six teachers at my school. He teaches French, History and Geography masterfully juggling more classes and students than any of his colleagues. The Guru is at the same time the shortest and heaviest among us teachers. This feat, bringing shame in the states, earns him instant respect. In Africa, a stomach well fed belongs to a person who knows how to look out for his own. A bulging waist-line is the African equivalent to driving a Beamer or sporting a Rolex, yet much more indicative of the owners actual well-being. A person will fed in Africa is probably the happiest and most content. While in the States, the man behind the Benz may very well be the saddest of the bunch. 

The Guru is a widely known as a man who does life well. His reputation is not in small part due to the four solar panels gleaming deep blue perched in his courtyard. With these solar panels, he has lights to see inside and out, a boom box to blare music day and night, and a fan to keep him cool while the rest of us swim and sleep in our own sweat. His most prized contraption, and most beneficial to others, is his home entertainment system. 

Each and every night preceding a day without school, which has been numerous lately considering the student strike, he hauls outside his battery and clamps together wires connecting a DVD player, TV and speakers. With one push of a button, poof, like magic, shining blaring into the dark African wilderness is modern cinema.

This is what I do on Friday nights. I huddle around a small TV in the company of my fellow teachers. To take a break from the likes of Steven Segal, Chuck Norris, and Jean Claude Vandam, all of which the Burkinabe consider gods, I tilt my head skyward.  Often, the only think better than Cinema Burkina is Cinéma des étoiles – cinema of the stars.