Indeed, it's been quite a year.
12 months ago, I was saying goodbye to you all, and wondering how the heck I would arrive at teaching classes in a language I'd only studied for a few months.
10 months ago, I visited my school for the first time during training, and then managed to pull off a decent intro class in "model school".
8 months ago, I went to my first teacher's meeting and hardly understood a word.
6 months ago, construction in our computer lab finished, and I finally got to start class for real.
4 months ago, we finally got moving, after strikes and weird cancellations calmed down a bit.
And it's really within these four months that most of the work has gotten done. I had mentioned final projects in my last post-- those are all graded now, and we had an end-of-year ceremony this past week. Some of the students did a really impressive job: one wrote 19 news/opinion articles on his blog, and another used Excel to do a pretty solid breakdown of how much of the expenses from building a house stay in-country, complete with a blueprint of said house (Dad will appreciate this). I really enjoyed the family histories that many of them wrote on Word, and will have to translate a few into English to share.
The pace of life has been pretty furious up until about now, between all the grading, planning and other business. So, I'm hoping to finally get some pause to reflect on how to make next year even better. In the meantime, selling and fixing computers as a fundraiser for our lab has been a success I'm not quite sure how to contain... if you're reading this and happen to have an old-but-working laptop, there is someone here who will buy it!
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Friday, April 19, 2013
Finals month already?
Hard to believe, but true! My last update was in February, when we were midway through the second trimester. We had a week and a half of spring break at the end of March, and have just finished the second week of the final one, which finishes in mid-May.
Burkina trimesters, however, aren't created equal as they are in the States. The fall trimester is usually pretty laid back, with very few papers and tests, and some tolerance for interruption. The second semester is when everyone attempts to catch up. And the final trimester seems to be chock full of evaluation. The students in Terminale (12th grade) and 3eme (9th grade, last year of middle school here) just had their practice exams last week for the BAC and BEPC, tests that they must pass to advance to university/high school. There is high demand for computers during off hours-- students come and do research for their assigned papers. Everyone is much busier than they were back in October.
Our "finals month" started off with finishing up some business from last semester. Earlier in March, I had everyone choose a topic related to IT to research-- from the Apple II to Google Glass. After their research, they prepared a Power Point presentation, and I graded them on the quality of their research, their written presentation, their oral presentations, thoughtful questions they asked of other presenters, and how well they responded to questions that they recieved. It was a lot of fun-- the idea of points for asking good questions really got everyone involved (and embarrassed the ones who didn't do their research). I could turn this into something like a game show next year.
Correct! One point.
The students now have the rest of the month to do a final project of their choosing (based on a list of suggestions that I provided). Some examples:
Pictured: Bernard Bacye, working on his story Le dernier gardien de l'arbre. (The last guardian of the tree) The paper at the bottom right: an illustration he drew. We took a picture of it today, in the absence of a working scanner, and it's now on his cover page.
Pictured: Rania Koala, writing an account about her family titled L'origine des Koalas. If you look carefully enough, you might notice a picture of a koala on her screen.
Pictured: Véronique Sondo imagines how she might start up a restaurant. After coming up with a complete list of startup expenses, she is thinking about how much she might get away with selling a plate of riz sauce for.
Pictured: Alassane Diabaté is hoping to find temporary work this summer as a secretary, and is shooting for 30-40 wpm (a little harder on French keyboards).
Pictured: Wilson Traore uses an improvised light table to trace some
pencil-sketched comics with a dark pen. We used the photo below to
transfer his drawing to the computer.
And so the fun continues. It's really a pleasure to have a group that now knows the basics of how to use a computer-- that was something that I struggled with at first, coming from a place where that sort of knowledge is assumed. There are a lot of ways I could improve the class next year, and I'm looking forward to having June off to reflect on the curriculum. But I'm excited to see what comes out of these projects! Really proud of this group after a long, full week of work.
And lest I forget...
Some students (not pictured) have started a blog as their project and are putting up local news stories. If you're versed in French, or care to take a chance with Google translate, here is the link:
Burkina News Network
Burkina trimesters, however, aren't created equal as they are in the States. The fall trimester is usually pretty laid back, with very few papers and tests, and some tolerance for interruption. The second semester is when everyone attempts to catch up. And the final trimester seems to be chock full of evaluation. The students in Terminale (12th grade) and 3eme (9th grade, last year of middle school here) just had their practice exams last week for the BAC and BEPC, tests that they must pass to advance to university/high school. There is high demand for computers during off hours-- students come and do research for their assigned papers. Everyone is much busier than they were back in October.
Our "finals month" started off with finishing up some business from last semester. Earlier in March, I had everyone choose a topic related to IT to research-- from the Apple II to Google Glass. After their research, they prepared a Power Point presentation, and I graded them on the quality of their research, their written presentation, their oral presentations, thoughtful questions they asked of other presenters, and how well they responded to questions that they recieved. It was a lot of fun-- the idea of points for asking good questions really got everyone involved (and embarrassed the ones who didn't do their research). I could turn this into something like a game show next year.
Correct! One point.
The students now have the rest of the month to do a final project of their choosing (based on a list of suggestions that I provided). Some examples:
Write a children's book using MS word!
Interview family elders and write down some of their stories.
Imagine that you had 70,000 FCFA ($140) to start a business. Come up with a list of expenses and revenues, and estimate your monthly profits over the course of a year using MS Excel.
Improve the speed and accuracy of your typing. Try not to look at the keyboard.
Pictured: Alassane Diabaté is hoping to find temporary work this summer as a secretary, and is shooting for 30-40 wpm (a little harder on French keyboards).
Come up with an art project using GIMP.
And so the fun continues. It's really a pleasure to have a group that now knows the basics of how to use a computer-- that was something that I struggled with at first, coming from a place where that sort of knowledge is assumed. There are a lot of ways I could improve the class next year, and I'm looking forward to having June off to reflect on the curriculum. But I'm excited to see what comes out of these projects! Really proud of this group after a long, full week of work.
And lest I forget...
Some students (not pictured) have started a blog as their project and are putting up local news stories. If you're versed in French, or care to take a chance with Google translate, here is the link:
Burkina News Network
Saturday, February 23, 2013
2013
54 days into the New Year might be a bit late to be writing a post like this... but there's been a lot going on to write about!
I kicked off the year with a nice bike ride through the savannah with my host brother, Mohammad:
Then I joined a couple of other volunteers to treat ourselves to an entire day of American-style home-cooking in the capital!
After that, it was down to business. Classes started up again without too many of the usual interruptions (strikes, surprise holidays, etc.). It's been a routine of sorts, but with enough variety the Peace Corps values of patience and flexibility a necessity. I like it that way.
How else could...
...one celebrate Christmas in mid-January, when everyone's packages finally arrived!
... someone bring in a 14-year old laptop and expect you to fix it?
... you attempt to teach 30 teenagers how to use the internet on a 128 kbps connection (hardly enough to stream video/Skype for just one person)?
... find a good plate of beans for 100 FCFA ($0.20)
... or buy 600 fresh, organic tomatoes for 5000 FCFA ($10)
... and then stay up 'til midnight turning it all into tomato paste.
That's a project that's been keeping me from having days off... in-season tomatoes aren't going to wait for us! I'm finally giving myself a weekend this time around, so I have more time than I'm used to, to reflect (and sleep late).
I'm headed off the Bobo-Dioulasso this morning (Burkina's 2nd largest city), but will be back in time to Skype and fill you in on these and other stories tomorrow night!
zero.eth
I kicked off the year with a nice bike ride through the savannah with my host brother, Mohammad:
Then I joined a couple of other volunteers to treat ourselves to an entire day of American-style home-cooking in the capital!
After that, it was down to business. Classes started up again without too many of the usual interruptions (strikes, surprise holidays, etc.). It's been a routine of sorts, but with enough variety the Peace Corps values of patience and flexibility a necessity. I like it that way.
How else could...
...one celebrate Christmas in mid-January, when everyone's packages finally arrived!
... someone bring in a 14-year old laptop and expect you to fix it?
... you attempt to teach 30 teenagers how to use the internet on a 128 kbps connection (hardly enough to stream video/Skype for just one person)?
... find a good plate of beans for 100 FCFA ($0.20)
... or buy 600 fresh, organic tomatoes for 5000 FCFA ($10)
... and then stay up 'til midnight turning it all into tomato paste.
That's a project that's been keeping me from having days off... in-season tomatoes aren't going to wait for us! I'm finally giving myself a weekend this time around, so I have more time than I'm used to, to reflect (and sleep late).
I'm headed off the Bobo-Dioulasso this morning (Burkina's 2nd largest city), but will be back in time to Skype and fill you in on these and other stories tomorrow night!
zero.eth
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Bonne fête!
I last posted right before Thanksgiving ... and now it's the day after Christmas! Is it just me, or has time been flying?
And yet every week has been different. Thanksgiving was mostly just a regular working day during my second week of teaching. I had wanted to celebrate with some other volunteers that weekend, but got caught up wiring a network and some network software between all of the computers, which is something that now lets me shut down, freeze, or control any/all of the computers in the lab. The first time I got it to work in class, the students were duly impressed. Too bad they could easily disable it if they learn well: all they need to do is unplug the network cable.
But, I didn't get to demonstrate my work that next week... because classes were suddenly cancelled! Call it an "election break". As a precaution, the Ministry of Education closed all the schools for the five days in advance of the municipal elections on December 2nd. And we thought that the US elections were intense...
The break gave me some time to catch up on badly-needed lesson planning that I'm continuing on now. I had gone straight from setting up the lab to teaching, so it has hardly been an organized class. But as you might guess, that also was interrupted by a two week stay in Ouaga for In-Service-Training (IST).
IST was in general, pretty good. It was fascinating to catch up all of the other volunteers in my group, and hear stories from all across Burkina Faso. Life in village of a couple thousand in the bush is vastly different from life in a college town that's the third largest city in the country. And that is still very different from life in Ouaga, where planes fly overhead every other hour, a couple of streets look like they could have been lifted in from Europe, and real mozzarella cheese is available. In Ouaga, we enjoyed four formal class sessions every day, with snacks and a lunch in between, and the evenings were free for us to exhaust ourselves and our paychecks on cab rides to downtown restaurants, groceries, and clubs. Or in my case, poker games, Settlers of Catan, reading thriller novels late into the evening, and one wine and cheese party-- the wine being from locally made vintage: bissap (hibiscus flower juice), baobob fruit, shea nuts, oranges, etc.
I spent one night back at site midway through our training, to visit the Nuits Atypiques de Koudougou-- a yearly festival celebrating new and "atypical" food, music, and crafts. I think I've mentioned an informal group that I work with in a previous post-- we bottle tomato sauce, and had hoped to show off our work at a booth there. This plan got cancelled at the last minute for reasons too complicated to describe here, but we managed to turn a disappointment into a way to look for some new opportunities. There are a lot of people here who make packaged foods locally, but trying to go up against imported competition is hard to do alone. We'd like to form some sort of coalition.
Coming back after finishing IST, I arrived in a town that had just partied hard and was cleaning up in the aftermath. The 11 of December, Burkina Faso's national holiday, was celebrated in Koudougou this year, with the President and many other officials in attendance. I wish I could say more about it-- but I wasn' t there to see it. There's always next year.
But coming back, I also recieved a warm welcome from my neighbors and co-workers here. I'm really thankful for that. There are some cultures where foreigners are given a lot of distance, but fortunately Burkina Faso is not one of them. While it's been tough not being with family on Christmas, my friends here have helped me feel comfortable and more than full at their parties.
Next up-- a free week, to puzzle out the different moving pieces of life before making any New Year's resolutions. Thinking about it, 2012 has been a pretty wild year-- I could call it the year of no routine. I'd like to keep the adventure going into 2013, but enjoy some more organization. I'll be ringing in the year in Saponé, with my host family from training.
And yet every week has been different. Thanksgiving was mostly just a regular working day during my second week of teaching. I had wanted to celebrate with some other volunteers that weekend, but got caught up wiring a network and some network software between all of the computers, which is something that now lets me shut down, freeze, or control any/all of the computers in the lab. The first time I got it to work in class, the students were duly impressed. Too bad they could easily disable it if they learn well: all they need to do is unplug the network cable.
But, I didn't get to demonstrate my work that next week... because classes were suddenly cancelled! Call it an "election break". As a precaution, the Ministry of Education closed all the schools for the five days in advance of the municipal elections on December 2nd. And we thought that the US elections were intense...
The break gave me some time to catch up on badly-needed lesson planning that I'm continuing on now. I had gone straight from setting up the lab to teaching, so it has hardly been an organized class. But as you might guess, that also was interrupted by a two week stay in Ouaga for In-Service-Training (IST).
IST was in general, pretty good. It was fascinating to catch up all of the other volunteers in my group, and hear stories from all across Burkina Faso. Life in village of a couple thousand in the bush is vastly different from life in a college town that's the third largest city in the country. And that is still very different from life in Ouaga, where planes fly overhead every other hour, a couple of streets look like they could have been lifted in from Europe, and real mozzarella cheese is available. In Ouaga, we enjoyed four formal class sessions every day, with snacks and a lunch in between, and the evenings were free for us to exhaust ourselves and our paychecks on cab rides to downtown restaurants, groceries, and clubs. Or in my case, poker games, Settlers of Catan, reading thriller novels late into the evening, and one wine and cheese party-- the wine being from locally made vintage: bissap (hibiscus flower juice), baobob fruit, shea nuts, oranges, etc.
I spent one night back at site midway through our training, to visit the Nuits Atypiques de Koudougou-- a yearly festival celebrating new and "atypical" food, music, and crafts. I think I've mentioned an informal group that I work with in a previous post-- we bottle tomato sauce, and had hoped to show off our work at a booth there. This plan got cancelled at the last minute for reasons too complicated to describe here, but we managed to turn a disappointment into a way to look for some new opportunities. There are a lot of people here who make packaged foods locally, but trying to go up against imported competition is hard to do alone. We'd like to form some sort of coalition.
Coming back after finishing IST, I arrived in a town that had just partied hard and was cleaning up in the aftermath. The 11 of December, Burkina Faso's national holiday, was celebrated in Koudougou this year, with the President and many other officials in attendance. I wish I could say more about it-- but I wasn' t there to see it. There's always next year.
But coming back, I also recieved a warm welcome from my neighbors and co-workers here. I'm really thankful for that. There are some cultures where foreigners are given a lot of distance, but fortunately Burkina Faso is not one of them. While it's been tough not being with family on Christmas, my friends here have helped me feel comfortable and more than full at their parties.
Next up-- a free week, to puzzle out the different moving pieces of life before making any New Year's resolutions. Thinking about it, 2012 has been a pretty wild year-- I could call it the year of no routine. I'd like to keep the adventure going into 2013, but enjoy some more organization. I'll be ringing in the year in Saponé, with my host family from training.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
IT Class in Burkina Faso: An Managed Chaos?
Time for another mid-week update! Staying up unusally late again on a Tuesday night, but happy that I don't have to deal with the application process anymore, and can instead get ready to work with my excellent students.
After a rocky start last week-- between rushing to finish getting everything physically ready, figuring out lesson plans, and figuring out how to manage a class of 30 kids in front of computers (many for the very first time), I think I'm on the right track. But boy, every class is a different animal. I suggested a post about lesson planning last week-- but any ounce of lesson planning ought to be amended by a few pounds of flexibility. Here are some things that are prone to happen:
Brownouts
Sometimes, the electricity just gives. The number of computers that we have running at once can be a strain on our own circuit, but often times, the brownouts are citywide. This was a real challenge today. It's nice to have a 50 : 50 desktop-laptop ratio in the room. If the cut is just for a few minutes, the kids can pair up and share the laptops running on battery power. Or crowd around someone who is doing something interesting...
Note: the above picture is from last week, when only 8 computers were fully set up for student use.
Clic gauche!
Most of my students have never used a computer before. So, it's fascinating to watch them play around with one for the first time. They can discover new ways of doing things that many of us experienced users might otherwise overlook. That said, they can often get stuck. A common confusion is mixing up right and left clicking.
"Monsieur, monsieur!"
I get this a lot when someone gets stuck. The question is when to respond. Sometimes, it's a really easy problem that their groupmates might help them with. But between 30 used computers and new users, it can get more complicated. My troubleshooting skills have already improved a ton.
Hmmm, after mentioning "groupmates", I should explain a little how the class is organized. We have 6 tables by design. In a class of 30, there are about 20-25 who are true beginners, and the rest have gone to an internet café at some point. I mentioned doing a bit of a test the first week-- this allowed me to split up the kids who already know a little bit, and have at least one at every table. The idea is that they'll be able to help out their classmates with the basics, which is all that we are focusing on for the moment. So far, that seems to be going really well. Burkinabé students really look out for each other-- it might have something to do with the fact that three to four of them share a bench made for two all through elementary and middle school (this balloons a normal class size to 60 or more!)
You might have noticed the perhaps-excessive photo doctoring above. I haven't figured out how to take decent photos in the dark with my point-and-shoot. So I have to compensate somehow... I'll be doing more of this tomorrow night, with my tomato sauce canning group-- we'll be making our label, after bottling 4 liters yesterday. Enough for a Thanksgiving feast!
Enjoy, and until next time!
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
From 0 to 100...
About two weeks ago, I wasn't terribly sure what I should be doing. I was bored. Then, we started installing the new computers... and that's where I left you at.
Well, after another week about not being sure about logistics, drumming up a buzz about IT class, and pulling a near-all-nighter to get everything in order before the first class, that's now nearly finished!
Yes, I said "nearly" finished. Indeed, we've started class without being 100% prepared, but that's just life here. We are waiting on the administration to buy us new power strips, a telecom guy to get our network in order, and another technician lend us his tool so we can cut some more ethernet cables. Patience and adaptability is the name of the game here-- I hope to really have everything in order next week, in a relative sense. If not, I have a backup lesson in mind.
But what's most import, and exciting, is that class has really started, and I have a really motivated group of kids. How does a novice IT teacher handle that?
Well, last week I asked some questions:
1. Le cours d'informatique est facultatif. En place de note, on reçoit une attestation. Quelles sont vos motivations pour poursuivre ça?
IT class is optional. Instead of a grade, you will recieve a certificate. What are your motivations for pursuing it?
2. Quelles sont vos attentes? Qu'est-ce que vous voulez apprendre?
What are your expectations? What would you like to learn?
3. Imaginez que vous avez l'opportunité de rechercher des informations sur n'importe quel sujet. Quel sera votre premier sujet de recherche?
Imagine that you have the opportunity to research anything. What would be your first topic of choice?
A couple of days later, I wound up with this lovely stack of papers. I recieved exactly 201 responses (applications, really) for 120 spots. I read every one of them, and had to make tough decisions for every class. In fact, I'm still in that process for fourth and final class, which meets on Friday. I have 34 excellent papers, but only 30 spots. A lot of tough decisions are made with the third question, which I think is the most interesting one. I've gotten responses ranging from "Michael Jackson videos" to "finding practical science experiments, and then sharing them with women in my village to see if they can make new products for the market". By far, the most common response is some variation on "the history of Africa/Burkina Faso", including "Why do Europeans think that we don't have a history?" Considering how little African history I learned in school, they have a point. I've read their history books here, and while there's much more, compared to the American bias in our own textbooks, it's not a whole lot. I can understand their curiosity. In a future post, when they have Googling under their belts, I'll have to share their research.
That said, I have already had two classes this week. The first one was a bit rough. As mentioned earlier, I was up until 5 AM the night before getting disk drives, keyboards, a printer, and various software in working order, in addition to picking the students for that day's class. There was confusion among the students about when the class would start, so not everyone showed up. And while the room was in order, the lesson plan, and my French were a mess. But, it's all something to learn from. My second class today went much more smoothly. My next post is likely to be about lesson planning, and I think then, I'll be able to share more details.
But until then... I have to get back to work, which involves cutting 4 more students from my final class. :(
I have a new appreciation for admissions offices everywhere.
Well, after another week about not being sure about logistics, drumming up a buzz about IT class, and pulling a near-all-nighter to get everything in order before the first class, that's now nearly finished!
Yes, I said "nearly" finished. Indeed, we've started class without being 100% prepared, but that's just life here. We are waiting on the administration to buy us new power strips, a telecom guy to get our network in order, and another technician lend us his tool so we can cut some more ethernet cables. Patience and adaptability is the name of the game here-- I hope to really have everything in order next week, in a relative sense. If not, I have a backup lesson in mind.
But what's most import, and exciting, is that class has really started, and I have a really motivated group of kids. How does a novice IT teacher handle that?
Well, last week I asked some questions:
1. Le cours d'informatique est facultatif. En place de note, on reçoit une attestation. Quelles sont vos motivations pour poursuivre ça?
IT class is optional. Instead of a grade, you will recieve a certificate. What are your motivations for pursuing it?
2. Quelles sont vos attentes? Qu'est-ce que vous voulez apprendre?
What are your expectations? What would you like to learn?
3. Imaginez que vous avez l'opportunité de rechercher des informations sur n'importe quel sujet. Quel sera votre premier sujet de recherche?
Imagine that you have the opportunity to research anything. What would be your first topic of choice?
A couple of days later, I wound up with this lovely stack of papers. I recieved exactly 201 responses (applications, really) for 120 spots. I read every one of them, and had to make tough decisions for every class. In fact, I'm still in that process for fourth and final class, which meets on Friday. I have 34 excellent papers, but only 30 spots. A lot of tough decisions are made with the third question, which I think is the most interesting one. I've gotten responses ranging from "Michael Jackson videos" to "finding practical science experiments, and then sharing them with women in my village to see if they can make new products for the market". By far, the most common response is some variation on "the history of Africa/Burkina Faso", including "Why do Europeans think that we don't have a history?" Considering how little African history I learned in school, they have a point. I've read their history books here, and while there's much more, compared to the American bias in our own textbooks, it's not a whole lot. I can understand their curiosity. In a future post, when they have Googling under their belts, I'll have to share their research.
That said, I have already had two classes this week. The first one was a bit rough. As mentioned earlier, I was up until 5 AM the night before getting disk drives, keyboards, a printer, and various software in working order, in addition to picking the students for that day's class. There was confusion among the students about when the class would start, so not everyone showed up. And while the room was in order, the lesson plan, and my French were a mess. But, it's all something to learn from. My second class today went much more smoothly. My next post is likely to be about lesson planning, and I think then, I'll be able to share more details.
But until then... I have to get back to work, which involves cutting 4 more students from my final class. :(
I have a new appreciation for admissions offices everywhere.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
The Next Two Years Begin
Hello, world!
Again, it's been far too long. And every day that I haven't posted makes it incrementally harder to describe everything that's been going on. I'll have to resort to some visual aids... and elaborate more on current projects in later (and hopefully more regular) posts.
I didn't take many pictures around this time, except for the concert that was put on the first Friday of the school year, in early October. On stage: one of our English teachers, with some of the 2011 contestants of "Faso Academy", Burkina's version of American Idol.
Despite the existence of a "hungry season" here, the science of canning vegetables is largely unknown. This project may well evolve into a real business. Stay tuned!
This week, the construction finally finished, and we were able to move in the new computers. Above: an awkward picture of your author in the old lab.
Do you remember the days before LCD monitors? We do! These are the old ones, destined for the new teachers' lab. Our newest devices are considerably less bulky!
On the left: Ziba Mamadou, librarian, chemistry lab manager, and my counterpart at LPK (Lycée Provincial de Koudougou).The stack of boxes? Each one has a laptop inside.
Before moving them in, we set up the teacher's lab. Here's a snapshot.
This is where we are currently. There is still a lot of work ahead-- installing software and smoothing out any compatibility issues. Then, I can finalize lesson plans and start class.
Ziba and I took a tour around the school this past week, and I met the classes I'll be teaching, and with that, a sizeable amount of enthusiasm. I'm looking forward to really getting settled into the job over the next few weeks. It looks like I'll be teaching four classes of 30, 2 to 4 hours per week each.
OK, got to get back to work. Until next time!
- ETH
Again, it's been far too long. And every day that I haven't posted makes it incrementally harder to describe everything that's been going on. I'll have to resort to some visual aids... and elaborate more on current projects in later (and hopefully more regular) posts.
Part I: School Starts!
I didn't take many pictures around this time, except for the concert that was put on the first Friday of the school year, in early October. On stage: one of our English teachers, with some of the 2011 contestants of "Faso Academy", Burkina's version of American Idol.
Part II: "Il faut patienter."
Indeed the school year had begun, but not yet for me. As I mentioned in my last post, we recently recieved over 30 new computers courtesy of The Friends of Burkina Faso. So, we needed to make room for them! Above: the work in progress.
The construction took longer than expected, and funding was cut for some time, so I got the chance to
travel with some other volunteers for a weekend. Above and below: the "fall colors" of Burkina Faso.
The rains here stop in October not to return again until May. Thus, the
land begins to dry out, leading to a beautiful contrast of colors: green
trees, yellow grasses, red earth and blue sky.
I've also started some secondary projects with the downtime. Below: making tomato sauce with my neighbor to preserve for the dry season.
Despite the existence of a "hungry season" here, the science of canning vegetables is largely unknown. This project may well evolve into a real business. Stay tuned!
Part III: Gearing Up
This week, the construction finally finished, and we were able to move in the new computers. Above: an awkward picture of your author in the old lab.
A crew of "Première" students (equiv. to juniors in an American high school) got the place cleaned up in short order. Above, Allain Gnabanou, physics/chemistry professor and counterpart of the last volunteer, directs them.
Aaaand... a bird's-eye-view of the new students' lab!
This is where we are currently. There is still a lot of work ahead-- installing software and smoothing out any compatibility issues. Then, I can finalize lesson plans and start class.
Ziba and I took a tour around the school this past week, and I met the classes I'll be teaching, and with that, a sizeable amount of enthusiasm. I'm looking forward to really getting settled into the job over the next few weeks. It looks like I'll be teaching four classes of 30, 2 to 4 hours per week each.
OK, got to get back to work. Until next time!
- ETH
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