Mango rains

The clouds roll in just before sunset. They come from the east, so it’s not always clear whether the sky is getting darker because of an impending storm or because it’s time for the sky to grow darker. Ominous and looming and every other cliché that has been used to describe weather events before they break.

You are an outsider. Unlike the Midwest where you grew up, the air does not become thick beforehand. You have lost the ability to smell a storm coming. You take your cues from those around you.

People start to get anxious. Almost all work is done outside. The only place to effectively hide from the storm is inside. Mamas wash out the bowls in which they mixed beignet batter earlier. Fires are doused.

Then, the wind picks up. It skims the dry dirt outside and in a furious blast, sends it through the windows being hurriedly closed. It leaves a fine coating, almost snow-like, on anything and everything in your front room.

The cat meows. He’s heard the thunder.

The rain starts slow. Uncommitted. Questioning how much it wants to leave behind. This is, after all, the dry season.

At last, the lightning. The lightning will stay the longest. Passing from cloud to cloud but also violent strikes. There’s no electricity and the flashes are too quick to read by.

Listen. The deafening rain on the metal roof. The thunder louder than motorcycle engines that has scared the animals into silence. Listen. This storm that has calmed the village.

It passes.

Always greener

The second to last day during our trip to Burkina Faso we encountered our first group of Burkina Peace Corps volunteers. Most of them were, like us, over a year into their service, and most of them, like us, seemed to be a little antsy to be back in a country where transportation is on time and stores exist where you purchase the exact thing that you were wanting to purchase.

They, though, couldn’t understand why we could want to spend our Christmas vacation in Burkina Faso. We, after having spent a week in the country, loved it and couldn’t understand why, if you lived in a country where there was Mexican food and gas stations with coffee machines inside you would ever not want to live there. They couldn’t understand why, if you were posted in a village where you had electricity on a relatively regular basis, you would ever leave.

Things are supposed to always look better when those things are unattainable. And once you have them, you tend to not appreciate them as much. For them, it was motorcycle taxis. For us, it was cities laid out on a grid system.

Throughout the trip, we kept a list of all the things that Benin did better than Burkina Faso. It was short, but I’m sure that if a Burkina volunteer traveled to Benin and did the same thing, his or her list would be much longer. I could ask when do we learn to be happy with what we have available to us instead of wanting what we can’t have? But even after 18 months living without certain things, I still dream of the day that I’ll have them again.

First words

I grew up a reader. My mom would read to me every night before I went to sleep. Every summer, I participated in the summer reading program at my local library. Each week, I would go the library, load up on books and then sit on our steps, unable to make it all the way up to my room, and read. I learned at an early age how books can change who you are, what you do and what you think. 

I live now in a country where very few books exist. (The largest collection of books I’ve seen is the library at our Parakou workstation.) In my seven months in village, I have seen one child reading for pleasure.

My students don’t even have textbooks. We have 27 English books at my middle school, but until 2 weeks ago, they were locked in a closet to which I did not have a key.

Last Friday, I got the books out for the first time during my 6eme class. I had a lesson planned about vocabulary at the market and didn’t feel the need to take the time to draw tomatoes, onions and mangoes on the board. 

I don’t know how many, but I have a suspicion that for quite a few, this was the first book they had ever seen, let alone be able to touch and read. 

Within 5 minutes of passing out the books, I knew I was not going to be able to finish my lesson. My students had become absorbed by the pictures and words, and nothing I could do would pull them back out.

I looked at my phone. We had 20 minutes left. I sat down at my desk and faded into the background. There was no need to interfere.

Stay inside the box

One of the first projects that I started when I first got to my village was participating in a program that paid for the school fees and school supplies for a female student at my middle school. In exchange for me buying her notebooks, pens and a French-English dictionary, if she completes a community service project, she will receive an additional stipend of school supplies for the next year.

We’re about seven weeks out from the end of the year, so my scholarship girl, Therese, and I sat in my house this afternoon planning her project. Therese is a quiet girl; she only speaks in class when she really knows the answer or when William, the boy who sits next to her, has done something to really annoy her. So, by “planning” I mean she stared at her fingernails while I probed her with “yes” or “no” questions trying to figure out what she could do.

“Like pulling teeth,” could be a cliché to describe the interaction. But about halfway through this interaction, I realized that, actually, this was probably one of the few times that an adult in her life had asked her what she wanted to do herself. One of the few times that an adult had genuinely listened to what she wanted to say and genuinely wanted to know what she wanted to do.

I’ve experienced this before. In the first meeting of my Girls Club, I asked the students what they wanted to do. They couldn’t come up with anything on their own, but wholeheartedly agreed with every suggestion that I proposed. It was like up until this point in their life, they had never been given a choice, so they weren’t how to respond when given an open-ended question.

I don’t know when creativity is beat (unfortunately usually literally) out of my students, but I’m more interested in the why. Why are my students taught not to be able to think for themselves? Why are my students taught that there is only one right answer for every question? Why are my students taught that to think outside what is expected is unacceptable?