The second trimester is coming to an end, which means calculating averages and filling out these giant report card things for each student and signing my name about 1000 times. But all is going well and I'm amazed at how quickly time is passing.

My village tour guide, Mikailou, and I have been keeping up the village hopping, and as with the first time biking drunken in the dark with chickens, the last village we visited proved to be another interesting adventure. We went to this village called Kodomba, about 8 km from my village. As usual, we biked, but this time it was against the wind the whole time and I've never been so exhausted from a bike ride (even when biking 40 km to Bobo). It was sooo hard to pedal into the wind. But, we eventually made it and our first stop was of course- a dolo bar to refresh our energy. So, after drinking a calabash of dolo, we started wandering the village. It was market day, so there was a lot of hustle and bustle going on. I ate pork which was delicious (sadly there is no pork in my village). Greeted a lot of people, drank a little bit of dolo, and was given a chicken (only one this time). Then, we decided to go to the barrage to see if there were any elephants, which I was of course told there are every day at 2 pm. We went to the barrage, talked to some kids who wanted to take us out in the canoes (the canoes filled with water by a small leak and every two minutes they took a bowl and scooped it out), but my tour guide declined so we sat and waited on the elephants for about an hour. No elephants. We left the barrage to say goodbye to his friend in the village who is a hunter in the forest next to the barrage. He said we had to go back, the elephants were there in the forest, and I needed to see them. Ughhh, try to understand that every time I go to Kodomba they tell me there are elephants and I never see them, so I was slightly frustrated and just wanted to go home. Somehow, I found myself biking into the forest with the two men. Eventually we left the bikes and started walking, and one guy said "look there they are!" I was pretty sure it was probably just a cow rustling around and I couldn't see anything. So, we tried to get a better angle (the forest is really dense there). Finally, from about 30 meters-ish (I'm a bad distance estimate, it was fairly close), I saw an elephant trunk swing and the ears flapping back and forth. It was an elephant!! I must admit now that I became giddy and excited like a little child. I thought it was really cool to see a huge elephant in the forest with me on foot. So, I wanted to get a picture of course, so we tried to get a little closer to see well. There were two elephants that we could see. As we started approaching, all of a sudden one of the elephants started charging at us. I swear. Imagine being on foot in a forest and all of a sudden an elephant- a freaking elephant- starts running at you. All of it took place in about 2-3 seconds, but in my mind it was seriously slow motion: The guy to my left took off toward the left, the guy on my right took off to my right, and so of course, I started to run too, hearing the brush rustiling behind me under the elephant. I realistically probably only ran about 5 steps, but in my head I was certain that I was going to die by the giant foot of that elephant that day. As quickly as the elephant started running, it stopped, turned around, and began to retreat. The three of us collected again, the men said how bizarre it was and that elephants are never like that, and asked if I wanted to try to get close again to get a good picture. Heart pounding, nerves on end, I said yes without hesitation. We tried, but unfortunately, the elephants kept walking away, and we couldn't get a good picture. Oh well, it was still really amazing. (I've put up a picture I took in the forest just before running away, notice you can not really see the elephant)

The next day I went to the hippo lake (about 22 km from my village) with another friend from village, Solo. We took a canoe out to get a good view of the hippos. There were maybe about 10 or 15 of them that day, and it was again really cool. Solo got a bunch of fish from the fishermen and we had it prepared and ate it by the lake. It was delicious. The hippos were really cool too, and I did get some pictures of them with their bird friends in the lake, fortunately no near 'when animals attack' experience happened here. I am seriously scared of hippos. There were a lot of these tiny flies that bite though, so I left with about 50 bites on my legs from the knees down. It was terrible. The first picture was taken from the canoe in the lake, the second is of me with Solo and a giant hippo head.

Smart sports fans all over the world (one of my students):

Another student dressed up for dancing that took place every night for almost 2 weeks shortly after the new year.

(She also cooks for me once a week and makes a delicious peanut sauce.)

This week I decided to visit a neighboring village about 8 km from mine called Dorosiomasso with a friend of mine, Mikailou (in the picture with the chickens). So, we biked to the village on a basically non route that ran through a rough area of brush with basically no landmarks to know if you're heading in the right direction. It was an interesting ride, as he biked rather fast for an older man and I struggled to keep up with him. Anyway, when we finally arrived after about 35 minutes I was relieved. Upon arrival, we met up with a teacher from that village so that we could go visiting a bunch of people who live there. So, we started with one of the chiefs (this village actually has 3 it's so big), then went to several other families homes to say hello. At one home was the family of a couple of my students, so I talked to them for quite a while and of course we drank Dolo (locally made beer), and then they gave me a male chicken. All day basically everywhere we went my male friends drank liquor that was given to them by the families, so after stopping by several families in just a couple of hours, my hosts were getting rather liquroed up. So, we went on with our chicken in hand and continued promenading the village. When we got to the house of the second chief, we stayed for awhile, the guys drank some more liquor and dolo, and the chief gave me a second chicken, a female this time. So, I thought, great. I have 2 chickens, we can go back to village and make a feast for several people.

So, as sunset was approaching, I kept suggesting we get started on our way back, since neither of us had a light, the road back to village was actually a non-road, and my host to get back had become rather inebriated. But, the saying goodbye's took a long time, and by the time we actually mounted our bikes, each with a chicken hanging upside down by the handlebars of course, the sun was quickly approaching the horizon. 8 km really isn't that far on a bike, but with my guide in his state, crashing his bike twice in the first 10 minutes of riding, I could see that it was going to be a long ride. 15 minutes into the ride, the sun was gone and the light left over was fading, as the chickens banged their heads against the bike on the rough terrain. 20 minutes and it was dark; not much progress had been made. I pulled out my cell phone which has a small flashlight on it (and had only one bar of charge at the time) to help light the way, but that light is rather weak. So, after about 20 minutes, now in the moonless dark, my guide crashed a third time (the path was really rough), this time breaking the tie that held his chickens feet together on his bike, realeasing a squalking chicken into the wild. So, he got up from the ground and went after the chicken. After a minute I realized that if I wanted to get back on the road to get home, I would have to dismount my bike and help catch this chicken. But, catching chickens isn't something I have a great deal of experience with, so I wasn't much help at first. Persistance paid off as eventually we cornered the chicken in a tree and were able to trap him. Mikailou took him back to his bike, I went back to grab my bike with the other chicken, and then I suggested maybe we walk for awhile. So, we walked the rest of the way back to Satiri (my village). It took about 40 minutes of walking, miraculously my cell phone flashlight held out so we had a small light to help. We got on the wrong path once, but my guide quickly realized that it didn't look familiar. It all looked exactly the same to me, desertlike ground spotted with trees and shrubs- I wouldn't have been able to find my way back in broad daylight.

When we got back his wife had to waiting for us to eat. I said the next day she should help me prepare and cook the chickens, and they said no, I couldn't eat them. Since there is a male and a female, I have to raise them and have chicken babies. So, for the time being, my friend is keeping my chickens for me since I don't really have a place for them, and he keeps mentioning that "whenever you need your chickens just come by and get them."

And yes, my hair was braided in the chicken picture and yes, I'm aware of how ridiculous it looked. It took 2 women and a girl 3 hours to do it; yesterday it took me about 5 hours to undo the disaster.

This Monday was Tabasky, pretty much the biggest holiday of the year here. It was a lot of fun, everyone ate sheep and wore new clothes and danced the night away. Then, on Tuesday it was back to the grindstone again with a 7 am class...but wait! For some reason that nobody at my school could explain (and nobody knew about until that morning actually) there was no class alll week. So, after the teaher's debating this for about an hour and the students standing around waiting for the ok to go home, it was made official by a call from someone who said it was true, and we all went home. Normally, I would be excited that classes are cancelled for a week and I can relax, but I was supposed to give 3 tests this week that I'm now screwed on, and relaxing quickly turns to boredom here.
So, not a lot new. This week I went to hang out with a friend in my village who has a pet monkey (pictures to come eventually, I always forget my camera when I go there). This monkey is super scared of me and always makes this horrible menacing face to me to try to get me to leave. Luckily, she is on a short chain on a tree. But, this particular day, my chair was apparently just slightly too close to the tree, and I didn't notice because she wasn't growling at me like usual. Then, all of a sudden, after me sitting there for about 20 minutes, she lept at me and slapped me and started freaking out! Fortunately the chain ripped her back and all she could do was scratch my arm a little bit- her teeth look sharp and I really don't want to experience them! It pretty much scared the crap out of me my heart was pounding and then she was growling and making these scary monkey attack faces at me the rest of the time I was there. Now that it's over it's a little bit hilarious, but at the time I was admittantly terrified.
I was also hit by a moto this week while riding my bike in Bobo, the damage to my body is minimal, just an enormous black bruise covering my right hip and butt. Guess I'm lucky, could have been worse. And then yesterday, I was pooped on by a chicken. And I have about 30 bites of some kind on my leg, not mosquitos or fleas...bedbugs maybe? If bedbugs, hopefully it's from sleeping in Bobo and not from my bed. It's been an interesting week. I guess at least I have my health!
Gotta get back to village today to try to get at least a little work done this week, prep for tests and lessons and such. Hope the holiday's are treating everyone well and the cold isn't too overwhelming, I really wish I could be there for Christmas, it's strange to be away for the holidays!

Despite not liking, almost hating cats, I now have a new best friend. He started out as just a mouse catcher, he was only supposed to be functional, but then I gave him a name- Wada, it's Jula for wild cat (like a lion or tiger)- and he's just so adorable, that he turned into a pet, and now I think he's great. I actually didn't want to leave village this weekend because I was/am worried about him. But, I left a big bowl of milk and some fish for him, and the litter box is empty, so he should be fine for the one day I am away from home.
I gave 4 tests the past two weeks, math and biology in 5eme and 6eme class, which means I have 400 papers to grade (137 is the current tally in 6eme, 65 in 5eme). I also gave a quiz in each class, so that's another 200. I'm about half way done and have spent about 7 hours grading I think. The students handwriting is horrible, and their French is pretty bad too, so it's really difficult to decipher what the papers say. The 6eme class may make me go crazy, every day I try something different. I gave them a pop quiz the last class because they talked so much, but that's more of a punishment for me because now I have to grade 137 quizzes. A kid stuck his tongue out one day, so I made him come to the front of the class and stand with his tongue out for several minutes. I mock them, take away their break time, give quizzes, but 137 6th graders are just too many to have in one room at one time. It's a disaster.
This week I took some pictures with the kids in my courtyard by setting the timer on my camera. Now they think I'm magic. When I went to get in the picture they were all confused, then after a minute the flash went off and they all cheered and laughed like it was amazing. Then, one kid brought me the baby and told me to do it again holding the baby so she could be in the pic too. So, I did it again, everyone cheered, and I got some pictures with the kids. Then, the baby pooped on me. It was disgusting. There are no diapers here. It was bound to happen, but I had let my guard down and was no longer paranoid every time I held a baby, so I was completely taken by surprise.
Yesterday I went and worked in the fields with the people in my courtyard. I cut a bunch of red mil, which is used to make dolo, something like a local beer. The family doesn't drink ever, and they have harsh words to say about people who drink, but apparently it's ok for them to sell mil to other people so that they can get drunk. I'm not judging really, I just think it's kind of bizarre.
I also took a couple of pictures of my big 6eme class. They thought it was great. I told them that I had family and friends at home who wanted to see what the class is like, and I wanted to send a picture. After the class, a girl came running after me as I was riding away on my bike, and gave me a note. The note says hello and thank you to my mom for letting me come here to help teach them. There are some days when I want to beat them with a stick (which one of the other professors actually does), and other days when they are really great.
So Obama won, which makes everybody here happy. It’s weird though. Most people in America can't find Burkina Faso on a map (or have never heard of it even), but everyone here knows that there is a huge election going on in America. Really everybody, not just the people in cities, or just the functionaires (teachers, police, etc., the people who speak French basically). There are tons of people in my village who don't speak much French, have no electricity, but yet they still know about the election in America. They listen to news on small battery powered radios. I'm impressed, and happy about the new president.
I'm in the process of putting up a bunch of pictures, so if that works at a decently quick pace, I'll have lots of new pictures on photobucket.

I'm really bad about keeping up with the blog, but it is kind of hard to get done sometimes, and I've been pretty busy lately with the school year in full swing and all. It's great though, I prefer being busy to having absolutely nothing to do like the first month I was in village. Now, I'm teaching 6eme and 5eme math and biology, 6eme is roughly the equivalent of 6th grade, and 5eme 7th to 8th grade (although there are a few giant kids in my 6eme class who must be about 16 years old, but this is common as a lot of kids repeat grades here). I feel like I should briefly explain how classes work here, it's slightly different from the states. There are 4 classrooms lined up side by side at my school, one for 6eme, one for 5eme, one for 4eme, and one for 3eme (6th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd level, which is kind of like 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grade- backwards from the American system). Each grade level is not broken up into several classes like it normally is in America, so all of the 6eme students have class together, all the 5eme, and so forth. I mention this because I'm about to say that there are 133 students in the 6eme class. That's 133 6th graders, all in one classroom, all at one time, with me at the head trying to keep them from completely going crazy, much less actually teach them anything. It's pretty much a circus everyday with them. The students sit 3 or 4 to a desk, and there is only one aisle I can walk up and down. When I call students to the board to do problems, often they have to walk on the desks to get out of their rows. It's a little crowded, and often very loud. The 5eme class is only about, maybe 50 students, I'm not sure exactly. It's much more calm and much easier to teach them. I find class with the 6eme students almost a daily struggle right now. The last time I had class with them I told them that each time I had to tell them to be quiet I would add one minute to class. I added 18 minutes, but then halfway through the class it started raining. This may not seem like a big deal, but with no electricity, when it rains it's dark, and with a tin roof when it rains it's loud. So, basically the students couldn't hear what I was saying or see what I was writing on the board. Luckily, the rainy season is pretty much over so this won't be a problem too often. I ended up having to cancel the rest of class, but I made the students come in an hour early the next day to make up for the half hour we lost and the 18 minutes I added for their bad behaviour. I hope next time I don't have to do that again, it's as much of a punishment for me as it is for the kids. It's funny though, I would walk up to the board and make a big slash mark every time they got too loud and then they would start eating each other alive and getting all mad at each other. I'm just disappointed the rain kind of put a damper on my discipline that day, but hopefully the students will be better next time.

Village life is great. Right now I came in to Ouaga for the weekend. I really have no good reason to be here other than the fact that the World Series is shown at the American Embassy, and I want to catch a game. I get to use the great wireless internet at the Peace Corps transit house, and spend a lot of money on food, but at least it's good food. It's actually kind of nice to just get away for a few days and relax with some semblance of normalcy.

So, I'm thinking about constructing a garden for my school. The kids have school lunches available (not yet, but hopefully within the next few weeks), but their school lunch really has little to no nutritional value, and if they had a garden, we could grow some tomatoes, beans, peppers, etc. to supplement the lunch. The problem with the garden is that it costs a little bit to get started, a fence has to be built (cows and goats roam free around my school grounds), some supplies have to be bought (watering cans/buckets, seeds, manure, insect repellant so the plants don't get devoured), and a small amount of labor may have to be paid for the fence. I know there are several people at home who seemed interested in helping out with this kind of thing, but I hate to ask people for money. It doesn't take a lot to go pretty far in Burkina, so if there happens to be anyone interested in helping out with a project like this, please send me an email (ashleyh001@aol.com) and I can let you know more details about it. Also, if there were any extra money after the garden, there are several students at my school (actually it's more than several) who lack things like notebooks, pens, and rulers and stuff like that, so any extra money would go to buying things like that for the students. I will be happy to send a detailed email of plans to anyone interested in helping out, or just anyone curious about what I'm trying to do, but I prefer not to put up all the info here.

I'll be around Ouaga today and tomorrow until Sunday morning, and I have skype capability now, so if anyone wants to talk to me (for free!) and you have a skype username (free to get one if you don't) all you need is a microphone (or camera/microphone) and we can talk for free across the ocean. It actually works really well. Gonna go get some juice or something delicious and cold that I can't get in village, so that's a good update for now I think. Oh yeah, I sent in my absentee ballot today, hope everybody is planning to get to the polls soon, from what I hear a lot of people already have! Thanks for all the great birthday love from home, I got lots of cards and packages, and I (and my friends in village) love to get mail (the kids love m&ms, and stickers, and empty boxes, pretty much anything). Thanks so much!

Oh yeah I keep forgetting things..the picture is of some kids in my courtyard playing with these giant beetles the find in the fields. I came home from class one day to find the kids swinging these things around on little pieces of string, and upon closer inspection I saw that it was a big bug. They tie a string around it's neck or leg, and the beetles fly around and they hold the end of the string. It's like a kite. They call it "mouton" which is French for sheep, which only confuses me more than the fact that they're swinging beetles around on a string. Ok, really going to get something to drink now. Sadly, I left my nalgene bottle in a taxi. I was rather attached to that bottle, but life goes on.

It's been awhile, but now that I'm living in my village it's not so easy for me to update, seeing as I have no electricity, running water, or internet cafes anywhere in my village. But, I'm currently in Bobo, which is my nearest city with amenities (42 kilometers), so I'm trying to do a blog update, post a bunch of pictures (www.photobucket.com my username is ashleyinburkina, you can search me and see all the pics), and make contact with the outside world while I'm here. I'm assuming everyone is dying to know what a day in the life of me is like, so maybe I'll start there:
6:00-6:30: Try to ignore the roosters and women pounding grain in my courtyard.
6:30-7:00: Give up trying and drag myself out of bed.
7:00-9:00: Bucket bath, breakfast (usually tea and maybe bread, or banana if I can get one, or twice when I could get eggs French Toast!), then go draw a couple of buckets of water out of the well for the day and drag them, one by one, back to my house, and get a container of pump water for drinking (I filter it anyway, but one day I saw a little red worm swimming in my filter from the well water, so I quit using that for drinking).
9:00-lunch: Talk to the family a little bit, throwing a couple of Jula phrases to impress them, then I sit around and read (I finished the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy already, after 3 weeks) or study French or Jula, maybe go bug hunting- I've killed 9 roaches, about 50 spiders of variable scariousness, and at least 1000 obnoxiously loud crickets, or just stare at the wall for a while, Then, I go out and buy some tomatoes and maybe bread, and make bruschetta, or maybe if I have tuna a tuna sandwich, or peanut butter and jelly, or whatever I can find.
After lunch: More staring at the wall, maybe go talk to the police a little, or the other teachers, or my family, or anyone who speaks French, try not to focus on how incredibly bored I am, get supplies for dinner, read some more.
Evening: Dinner of fried rice, or pasta, or maybe some delicious fish that a lady in my village makes. By about 6:30, it's too dark to read, so I go sit outside and drink tea or coffee with my family. Eventually, when I get bored, or tired, or just sick of the mosquitoes, I go in, read by my little light hooked up to a small battery I bought, maybe stare at the all some more, then to bed and sleep, just to start all over again the next day. I have never been so excited for school to start. I need something to do!
Lately I've been biking a lot to pass the time, and the other day I actually did something very exciting. I took a bike ride to my hippo lake, which I thought was 8ish km from my village. But, after 8 km (I have a small km counter on my bike), I ran into another village, and thought it must just be a few km more. After about 11 km, I was starting to wonder if I took a wrong turn, but I ran into 3 fishermen who were on their way to the lake, so I kept going with them. After about 14 or 15 km, I asked if we were getting close, and the fishermen said only a few more kilometers. So, since I had already gone 15, thought a couple of more wouldn't hurt. Finally, after 22 km, I reached the lake, where there were no hippos and I couldn't even see the lake because it was so swampy around it that I couldn't get close. So, I biked 22 km there, 22 km back (44km equals about 26 miles!) to not see hippos. But, it was a beautiful ride, and there was a beautiful forest. I have some pics going up on photobucket for anyone who wants to see. I look forward to going back in the dry season when the hippos are actually there, and I heard there are elephants that pass through the forest too, so I'll have to keep my eyes peeled!
I'm kind of missing home, so all the letters and cards I recently got were much needed and appreciated, so thanks to all the ladies that my mom works with, I really am grateful. Don't know when I'll get back again, but school starts October 1st, so I'll try to update after that to say how the school year is going. I'll be teaching 6eme and 5eme (that's like 6th and 7th grade) math and biology, and the 6eme class has over 120 students in it! We'll see how that goes...

I have a new address!

Ashley Hess, PCV
S/C Corps de la Paix
B.P. 1065
Bobo-Dioulasso
Burkina Faso