*The opinions here are Garrett's, not the Peace Corp's*

 

Hey everybody. Life's been going well here, how about in the US? My big event that recently happened was...watching the Super Bowl. Life in Africa certainly is made easier when I get to see something spectacular like that to remind me of the US. I was expecting to meet up with around 20 volunteers who would come into town like last year. But, I only met up with one friend who wasn't originally planning to watch it! What's up with that! There are 120ish American volunteers here and I'm the only loyal American intending to watch it. I'm thankful that my Peace Corps country director, Doug, let us over to his house to watch it, he sure is fun to hang with.

Well, otherwise, what's been keeping my really busy in my village is my statistics project in one of my math classes. The book has a chapter on statistics, so I found 9 different problems in Burkina (child mortality, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Education of women, primary school enrollment, etc.) and made it into 11 different projects for 11 groups of kids. The students have to do some diagrams of the statistics and answer questions about what the statistics tell about the problems. I made them talk to various experts in the village (mostly the nurses at the local clinic) to help answer the questions. The tricky part at the end is they have to do one action to help their community against the problem. I was hoping they could do some active things, but they couldn't find anything to do, so I allowed them to do sensibilizations, grrr. Most of them did a little talk in class to their fellow students. That went ok, but when the kids' friends are up in front of the class, they're so rude to them and won't quit talking. It's not a normal school activity, so they didn't know how to handle themselves. I'm hoping to teach them to keep disciplined. There are two groups who were brave enough to do their sensibilizations in the market. I got the local clinic to lend me their microphone for the sensibilisations. They edited the scripts of the kids before giving permission. So, on Thursday afternoon, we met at the village market, I handed the microphone over to them, and they did a little walk around the market to talk about tuberculosis and the reasons for infant mortality. It was tons to set up logistically, but I think it was good that some impact was made, and it was made by my students.

The other big news regards the group of volunteers that have formed the Food Security Committee to work against hunger in the country. I've been made the director of Soils and Compost, so I'll be heading volunteer activities and giving ideas on teaching people to improve their soil and make compost to help their fields and gardens. I've had ideas about creating a model field in my village where I use more modern field and garden management techniques to grow a little millet and sorghum. If my millet turns out well, the villagers might become curious and start implementing some new techniques to help their soil and prevent deforestation.

Well, not much else I can think of.