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

Hey everybody. I hope things are going well. Little new has happened here in Burkina to tell about. I've done a few projects here and there and developing some for the rainy season June-August when everybody will be in their fields.

A recent major project I did was a writing contest for the students at my school on the question: "Why is it important that girls go to school?" In this culture, people often don't want girls getting secondary education because they're afraid the girls will get impregnated and will not want to help maintain family cultivation and housework and all that. But, of course, girls' education is necessary for the education of young children and so that women will be able to make good decisions regarding the health of their families. In reading the essays that my students wrote, I was a little surprised that the main reason they think girls' education is important is so they can get important government careers and have prestige in their adulthood. Out here, people believe the point of education is to become presitigious, which implies getting government work. It's not like in America or other Anglophone countries where people want to pursue careers in the private sector in order to do business. The government is the biggest, and in the mentality of the people here, only employer; thus they don't see any other options in their life if they bothered going to school.

The other developing project I had going on was preparing a field for the rainy season to plant millet and peanuts. I've was considering having it there to show people how to do various agricultural techniques that are being introduced into the country so they can see how well they work and thus help their own fields and prevent erosion. The main new technique is one called zai holes where you dig a series of holes in the ground and put animal poop in them, then cover them. Then, ants will come to eat the poop and thus disperse the poop's nutrients throughout the soil and aerate the soil, making it perfect for cultivation. This is practiced farther up north in the Sahel region where soil is on the verge of becoming the pure sand of a desert. I'm discovering that people in my village are resistant to these new techniques because it's against their custom; they don't see the necessity of it in face of future global warming and the encroachment of the Sahara. Custom is a strange thing in these traditional cultures. Americans will be surprised to realize that traditional peoples would rather die, starve, and suffer in maintaining their traditional lifestyles than changing their lifestyles to meet the modern world. Agriculture is one example of this. Luckily, Peace Corps gotten money for us to lead conferences in our villages regarding agriculture techniques for cultivators. I have a friend in my village who is related to the chief who is willing to facilitate a three day conference on agriculture for the village. This way, because it's being done by a respected local, cultivators will be more apt to listen to new ideas than if it's a 23 year old white guy talking to them in french.

The other big event that happened recently was one of the teachers at my school just got married during school break. They invited me to their wedding in a village about 25km north of mine and then for the wedding party on the way back to village. I made a bit of a faux pas that I felt stupid about when I arrived, I forgot to dress formally for it. It was especially bad because I had to bike to the wedding in the heat because of certain Peace Corps regulations about taking motorcycles. So, I show up in my sweaty Humboldt Alumni shirt where everybody else looks very nicely dressed. Luckily, the Burkinabe are a very polite people and didn't mention the elephant in the room. It was supposed to be a Muslim wedding, but I was surprised to see how modern it was, the bride had a white dress and the groom a tux. For the ceremony, they went to the mayor's office where the bride and groom sat on one side of a desk with a family member each. Then, two officials sat on the other side of the desk and read some various laws on marriage and such. Second, the bride and groom both gave their consent for marriage based off of a reading from some government law book or something. Third, the groom shows his wedding ring to everyboy in the room who acts as witness and the bride does the same for her ring. I could see they were nervous showing their rings and seemed a tad uncomfortable with the protocol of it. At the end, they gave an embarrassed, half-hearted french kiss in front of everybody. In most of Africa, PDAs aren't tolerated, so I could see their embarrassment doing the kiss. On leaving the building, they got sprayed by white confetti. The food afterwards was good.

That's all I could think up. I'll try to get wedding photos and more photos of my Closing of Service party up if I get the time.