I’m in Fada, my regional
capital right now to get drugs for my dog. My friend (a close by
volunteer) and I biked over 50 miles yesterday through rain and mud
because the medications for my dog are not available in my village.
School just started last week, I work at the junior high, but there is
another volunteer 5k away who works with the primary school. Her story
of the first day blew even me away. In our region of the country the
language varies a lot. Even between my village and a village 12k away
the difference in pronunciation is widely varying. The teacher in
charge of things at her primary school is from Fada, so his
Gumalchamae (the name of the language) was barely comprehensible to
the students. On top of that there is a large Poule population in our
area and these kids only speak Fulfulde. So on the first day of class
the situation was that half the kids could sort of understand what the
teachers were saying, and they weren’t even trying to speak French,
the language they will eventually be learning in. On top of that most
kids are given nicknames and did not recognize their own names as
their parents had registered them. They were doing this all outside
under straw mats because there aren’t enough classrooms at her school.
At this point I was entirely impressed with the students I get 6-7
years later that speak french, can add, multiply, divide and function
reasonably in my classes.
I’m teaching the two younger grades at my school; in both english and
math; so that gives my 20 hours of teaching a week and 123 students in
one class and 96 in the other. There aren’t enough desks for everyone
so in my larger class the students are four to a four foot wide desk,
in a couple of cases 5; and at the front of the room I have a couple
of kids on chairs and one kid has a drawer. But they are awesome,
incredible students; and I’m nothing if not impressed by them and
their desire to be in school. We learned the parts of the body in
English last week and played a rowdy game of simon says, the girl who
remembered what sit down meant won.
the visit to the vet’s was amazing this morning, the guy came in on a
saturday to write out a prescription for me. He listened carefully as
I described what was wrong with Rou and then wrote out a prescription
for some prenatal vitamins (we think she might be pregnant again) and
some anti-worm medication. He told me I could pick it up at the people
pharmacy. So I went there to get the drugs. This pharmacy in Fada is
amazing, with computers and good shampoo (and I even found deoderant;
the spray kind, not great but I’ve been looking all over for
anything). So anyways the lady gets the drugs to me and as she hands
me the meds she tells me “get well”, wait a minute it’s not ME who has
worms and is pregnant. Oh well, can’t win them all.
My courtyard is stoked with the cutest kids in the country and I wish
I had crayons so I could sit them down and have them color; there is
this one little boy and girl, Innocent and Zidane; who are the most
precious things ever. When they see me, they get these large smiles on
their faces and they wave. Sometimes they’ll even do a little dance;
but they won’t just stand around and stare at me. My mom is equally
awesome, she brings me dinner everynight; and when it’s my
sub-family’s turn to make dolo (african moonshine) she’ll wake me up
in the morning to share it with me. Ah nothing like dolo to get me
moving in the morning.
My colleagues at school are awesome; my counterpart is crazy and a lot
of fun; and there are two others doing their first year of teaching
and are my age; so lots of cool and fun people to hang out with.
Still miss Kirsi, it’s a difficult transistion; everyone is on my case
to learn Gumalchama, which I’ve picked up some of; but the grammar is
so different; and even saying hello is much more complicated. It’s one
thing to move, it’s another thing to leave a village with no heads up,
I still haven’t gotten to say goodbye to most of my friends there; and
move somewhere where even the customs and greetings are different. But
as they say all the time over here: little by little. Work is keeping
me busy so these last few months are just going to fly by.
I hope all is going well for you everyone, take care;
