Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello everyone!

I just got back from the north where about 20 of us had a wonderful thanksgiving. There are notable pictures and stories from this adventure, and since I am not with camera or a lot of time right now, I'll just say that it was great and I'll write about it later.

I'm seriously behind on other things I should have written about by now so I'll just keep writing till I run out of time here.

Be Thankful to Have Your Parents:
It was Tuesday morning, 7 am, and I was beginning my 6eme biology class. The kids were being little bandits so I was having to raise my voice and try to convince them that they wanted to be quiet for me. Then the Surveyant (who's the disciplinarian/administrative kind of person) knocks and asks for a minute of my time. "Pas de problem," I tell him and he comes in and commands full, standing attention of the class in under two seconds. I wish I could do that. At any rate, he explains that he's here to collect the names of any students who had lost both their mother and father. It's a class of 6th graders. Three hands go up: a tiny girl in the front and two boys in the back. He starts with the girl: "Your mother's dead?" he asks. "Yes, monsieur," she whispers. "Your father?", he asks. "No, he's alive," she says quietly to her desk. "Didn't you hear me?", he barked, "I want names of kids who have lost both their parents!" He proceeded to take the boys' names and then thanked me and left. I don't know why they were taking those names down - maybe some sort of tuition break for the kids' families. But at any rate i was floored. 2 kids out of 93 had lost both their parents by 6th grade. 1 in 50. Now I know that it's not as bad as it coud be or as bad as many places in Africa, but it was still a real reality check since life in Bagre's pretty nice. You have to look for the real suffering, even if it's there all the time, since all in all, life's ok down here. Sometimes you can just forget that a lot of people don't live very long, especially kids under 5, and that someone who looks healthy today, even if it's one of your 6th graders, could be gone next week. The life expectancy is slightly under 50 years and the median age is under 17.

So When Do You Run Out of Water?
Being up North for Thanksgiving really let me see the difference between the northern Sahel region and the southern Sudan region of Burkina, especially now that I've lived down there for three months. Au Sahel, the ground is dusty sand and the trees are more sparse and the land is more flat. In the day it's still hot but at night it gets really cool. Water starts to really be a concern up here during the second half of the dry season, and way up there in the north (you can see it on the map), the concentration of people just starts to drop off. We weren't THAT north, but some of us are placed in villages that are. Brian, for example, lives only a few km from Mali up in the north in a small village. We were chatting the other night about things and Mac, a felllow Sahel-dweller, says to Brian, "So when do you run out of water?" "Oh about February I guess," Brian said. And then he explained that his village runs dry about that time and that they have to get water from another village. I complain about having to haul water across the street - so i can't even imagine.

Interview with the Mayor
A few weeks ago I made the 8km bike ride between my house and my local language teacher's house over in old Bagre village, a visit that was probably well over due. I'd been in village for a while now and hadn't yet really presented myself to the village over there since my site visit in July. Anatole, my teacher, took me over to the Mayor's house. It's the first time Bagre village has had a mayor, since being like most villages here, rule is left completely to village cheifs. Well now they have both. The idea has something to do with trying to help the economy of the village. So we biked out to his house and found the Mayor sitting with a friend under a big tree listening to some sort of traditional african chanting on a tape deck that was easily as old as I am. The conversation started in Bissa, went to Moore and then to French. Soon it went to English with Anatole translating for me. Sometimes I drop into English when I have the chance because while I can certainly can get through any converstaion in French, sometimes I'd like to sound more like someone my age instead of a 6th grader. As you might imagine, my introduction to the Mayor was one of those times. He started with the basic questions about how my stay was going, how work was, how was my health and family and then we moved to the 10 point question section of the test and he started asking me about why I was here, how I was going to help Bagre, what I saw in store for Bagre's future and the suffering of its people, and how I was going to be a part of that future. You can see why I switched to English. I gathered all my smooth-talking skills and explained that the government of Burkina Faso and the education administration had invited volunteers here because of the dire need for teachers and I had come as a response to that as a part of an American organization called le Corps de la Paix. So what I was doing was to help educate kids. As for the future of Bagre, I told him I wasn't worried since it has become exceedingly clear to me that the dam here has really made Bagre an exception among villages its size. With the right organization and advice and time of course, Bagre'll be fine and it's very much on the cusp of really starting to develop. He was impressed with my answers, I was told the next day, and he gave me a watermellon. Score.

Ok that's all for now. Hope everyone had a GREAT Thanksgiving and ate a TON of good food.