Weekly Update: 2.12.11

• Important Health Discovery #1: Protein powder, as amazing as it sounds (complete protein!  just add to water!), tastes gross.  Unfortunate, as I just acquired a can of it from an ETing volunteer.
• Important Health Discovery #2: I have bed bugs.  Ughhhhh.  They're semi-impossible to get rid of, according to a recent article in Time magazine, but Peace Corps isn't in the habit of giving new mattresses even if you're being eaten alive every time you go to sleep.  Their suggestions: spray your bed down every night with insecticide.  That failing, put your mattress in the sun in hopes that they'll die of heat (this, I'm pretty sure, won't work, as the inside of my house is almost always hotter than outside).  Other truly excellent Peace Corps medical advice:  Snakes are not puppies (meaning: don't play fetch with snakes).  Don't play with monkeys (AIDS, ebola, penchant for throwing feces in peoples' eyes... that actually happened).  Most importantly: it doesn't count as diarrhea until you've had 4 or more loose bowel movements every day for minimum four days.  Sixteen sprints to the latrine, and you can call the doc.
• PC Medical Care is actually pretty great, I promise.  Just sometimes it's also hilarious.  Once, our doctor told us that if we didn't smoke cigarettes, we would all get to drive a flying car.  See?  Quality.
• Explaining Technology. I tried to explain the concept of a washing machine to my neighbor Chancelline, as a way of excusing myself for sucking at handwashing clothes. The next day, her sister came by to double-check what Chancelline had told her: that I had a giant computer in America that could wash clothes. Umm... yes.
• Chancelline Reads. Chancelline has a habit of coming over when I'm reading and starting to read out loud over my shoulder. Kind of annoying if I'm at a good part in the book, but sometimes fantastic -- this week, she read a part about puppies. Or "poopieh," as she pronounces it.
• Monday Chat = Actually Productive!  I cornered my very-busy school director (boss) on Monday and had a quick chat with him about my projects.  Results: we're choosing a date for the spelling bee (probably March 9th), I've got a date and time for my first girls' club meeting (Wednesday at 5pm -- wish me luck!), he's supposedly talking to the accountant about cementing a wall so that I can paint a giant map on it, and I get to help teach computer classes!  (Note: I didn't know we had computers until about a month or two ago -- a French NGO donated something like 15 computers to our school in the past year or two, and so far no one uses them.  Gabriel, my professor friend with the awesome professor wife, is teaching the classes, and I'm going to go help out with basic program stuff -- yay!)
• My Director Likes Me!  I overheard him talking to admin people later that same day, and he was giving kind of a lecture about how I left all my family and all of my friends waaaay far away to come here to serve.  He said "serve" about eight times, then talked about all of my projects and energy.  It's really good to know that he likes me, because I kind of thought he was getting annoyed with all of my club- and world map-related nagging. : )
• Devoirs... Meh.  We just graded the exams from last week, and they weren't great.  My younger kids did alright (I think at least half passed), but the 5eme... I think 7 out of 44 passed again.  I can't even really blame them (I mean, I can -- I know some didn't study), because the test was WAY too hard for them.  Luckily, I think the head English prof realized that, since he had about the same results, so I'm hoping to push towards a conversation where we talk about what should be in an exam text.  One of my friends (Bevin) was told by a prof that they were supposed to test kids on what they hadn't learned yet to see what they could guess... I suppose that's one approach, but seems kind of dumb to me.
• I'm Teaching Math... Africa Beware.  Not in actual classes, I promise.  I went over to my neighbor's house to buy akassa for my cat's dinner, and there was a group of kids practicing long division.  I started helping out on one problem, and ended up staying for two hours teaching them how to divide stuff.  I learned really quickly that multiplication tables are causing a lot of trouble for them, so I'm going to do what my mom did for me (thanks, Mom!): drill them until their brains are so fried that the answers are automatic.  They asked me to show up every Saturday morning at 7am... that's not happening.  But I am going to find time to help on a regular basis, because it's kind of awesome to be a Math Goddess for small African children.
• Oops. I must have gotten mad too frequently in class lately, because somehow some of my students now know the phrase "Shut up!" and say it all the time. Except they say "Sharrap!", which is hilarious, so I can't make myself tell them to stop.
  
  
  



I made homemade pasta!  With non-homemade parma rosa sauce.  Delicious.



My student Gerardine (left) with her brother Epiphane, modeling how they carry water. 
I will learn how to do this at some point.  I will.



My awesome friends in Houston painted ceramics and mailed them to me! 
So, so sweet, and look at my elephant teapot!





We had a fantastic, totally out-of-season torrential downpour on Thursday.  This is the mosque next to my house with the gorgeous clouds that preceeded the storm.





One of my students, Martial, asked me if I liked apples.  I said yes, wondering how in hell he was going to find apples in our village, and he brought me a little bag of these -- African apples, I guess.  He's so nice!  And I feel like a real teacher!