Four Weeks

After what I would sheepishly consider a rather desultory first year in village, I made a conscious decision to jump into my second year of service with a plan, with focus, and with the expectation that I would get results. This was immediately not the case.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Joel Turner, unofficial school teacher. School began the first week of October. In an attempt to make myself a more permanent fixture at the school, I asked the school director if there was anything I could do to help. It felt like I was asking a family friend if he had any summer work for me. Like mowing lawns or scraping paint off an old shed. The director mentioned that there were two classes unacceptably over capacity. CP1 and CP2 (Kindergarten and 1st grade, respectively) have a combined enrollment of 290 students. Two classrooms. Two teachers. That is an average student/teacher ratio of 145:1. I was not about to deny his offer (rather, plea) to assist these teachers in their duties. A few days later, our school was fortunate enough to acquire an extra teacher, so my duties were reduced to simply assisting my counterpart, Madame Guigma, in CP1.

The past four weeks have been among the most enriching in my entire Peace Corps service. Never have I had such an extreme range of emotions. I have never been more frustrated. I have never been more in awe of the skill required to teach. I have never been so angry. I have never been so humbled. Bold statements, I know, but simply passing the mornings in the CP1 classroom has taught me a lot. I will try to begin to describe some of which I have learned.

The Class.

I would have thought that after 17 months in this country, I had been exposed to the most audacious scents Burkina has to offer. I was wrong. Picture this. A classroom about the size of your normal high school room suitable for 20-26 16 year olds. Tin roof. Poor ventilation. 30 bench-style desks that seat 5 (yes FIVE) students per desk (do the math 30 x 5). 145-150 six year-olds that bathe perhaps once a week. They cough, they sneeze, they have dried mucus tattooed to their upper lips, they have pink eye and influenza and other nasty infections. The aisles between desks are almost too narrow for the students to pass through, nevermind adults. Even if I could describe the smell that usually arrives at about 8:30 am, every morning and manages to stay with me all day long, I wouldn’t wish to expose you all to such writing.
So there is the smell. I have learned to essentially turn off my nose in Burkina Faso, and while the CP1 class has proven to be quite a challenge to this talent of mine, I can still “shut it out” if you will. The sound, however, is difficult to regulate unless I put cotton swabs in my ears and that, well, would just look silly. I have found that disciplining children that outnumber me 150 to 1 is difficult when I a) am a strange tall white guy b) speak little Moore c) know they speak zero French d) know that they know that I will not, under any circumstances hit them for their bad behavior...unlike every other teacher in the school. Even though the kids are incapable off drawing a straight line, they are smart enough to know that I will not reprimand them for their actions in any serious fashion. Therefore, loud, raucous children essentially roam free when I am alone in the class with them.

Spare the rod...please?

According to the law books here in Burkina Faso, corporal punishment is illegal. Every teacher knows this. But everybody knows that every teacher hits. I always knew that teachers hit students. After spending four weeks in CP1, I have still not grown accustomed to watching, idly, while a six year-old is being whipped over the head for misbehaving or simply mispronouncing the word “Bonjour.”. Teachers tell me, emphatically, that it is a necessary practice to properly discipline the children. Even though I know the students do not respect me because I do not hit, I still completely and passionately disagree. In my most adamant of opinions, they hit because they are lazy. Teachers tell me that these kids are different from the kids in the United States. They need to be hit in order to improve their performance. Again, I disagree. Aside from a gross lack in life chances and social capital, these kids are no different from their six year-old counterparts in the United States public school system. The difference is the United States public school system has practically streamlined the idea of positive reinforcement when interacting with youth. It is so prevalent, in fact, that it is no longer considered a technique so much as a standard of teaching youth.
I am confident that long after I leave this country, students will continue to receive multiple lashings on the head with a thick rubber belt for mispronouncing a word. This does discourage me. And I will continue to do what I can to promote a more friendly environment for students, but I am not operating under the assumption that my efforts will bear fruit.

The Reward

If one was to take a verbal poll, I would guarantee that a sample of any given population would consider teaching to be the most rewarding profession. Personally, I would agree. I will continue to complain about each day and its misadventures. I will continue to dread the smell of the combined force of 150 hygienically-challenged African children. I will continue to bite my lower lip and refrain from raising my hand to these students when they continually tempt me to exercise their understanding of discipline. But I reap the reward of knowing what it is like to be a teacher. I reap the reward that comes with being a teacher. In four weeks, I have seen 150 students go from struggling to learn how to draw a straight line, conceptualizing the difference between left and right, to writing simple sentences in french. Four weeks ago, few if any of these students had ever been challenged to scrutinize the written word. To be able to witness the beginnings of formal education for these students will stay with me for ever. Right up there with the smell.


j

Jaded

I recently looked up the word “development” in my thesaurus. I have become quite obsessed with words as of late, as I am studying intensively for the GRE. Among the listed words were many concinnate and rather apt comparisons (evolving, upgrowth, advance, progression, flowering, etc.). One word, however, caught me off-guard. “Ongoing” sat at the bottom of the list of synonyms, staring at me, as if it wants to say, “yes Joel, development is continuous.” Obviously, one can use the word “development” in a plethora of contexts, but I found the word “ongoing” strangely haunting and sadly appropriate when I think of the state of development here in Burkina Faso. On the surface, one would find nothing portentous about the connection between the two words; after all, they do seem to compliment one another. But as true as the connection is in almost any circumstance, in my current environment, I find the connection to be, well, saddening.

Let me tell you a story.
Last week, I was having lunch with my new neighbor Blaise, a CP1 (Kindergarten) teacher at the newly installed primary school (translated: a patch of sand under the shade of a baobab tree with a small desk for the teacher. The government has yet to provide an actual building for the students) south of Pobe-Mengao. We were listening to a radio station based out of Ouagadougou, where a forum was taking place on the subject of “the fight against poverty.” Much as Americans are saturated with catch phrases such as “The War on Terrorism," “The War on Drugs,” “The War on Illegally Downloaded Music,” and even "The War on obesity," the Burkinabe have “the fight against [insert fundamental problem here]” Blaise quickly interrupted the radio to say, “You know, that phrase just bothers me. 'The fight against poverty?’ Politicians, NGOs, and non-profits always talk about the fight against poverty, and look at this village. What has changed? We are still impoverished. They’re just words.”

He’s right. Things are improving every year, but at an unacceptably laggard pace. I felt compelled to jump in and provide my complimentary sentiments, but I restrained and asked him to elaborate on why he felt things were not improving. “Its quite simple, Joel. Too many people are invested in the poverty of Africa. If there is nothing to fight against, if there is no malaria, if there is no guinea worm, if there is no VIH/SIDA, if there is no poverty, there will be no more business for the men and women in their clean white SUVs. Poverty is a business.”
I had to hold back my desire to laud that which he had said. I agree with him to a desperate degree. Development has become a business. Development workers need something to develop if they are to stay in business. Development is “ongoing.” Clearly, this is not an auspicious realization. After all, do we not want to “make poverty history”?

Ultimately, these are massive themes, much too big for a lowly Peace Corps Volunteer to tackle. But I guess what I want to convey is this: For every day that passes here, my view of the world is constantly changing. My ideas towards development and poverty, what these terms mean and how they should be approached, is in constant flux. I do not deny that I have learned so much here in Burkina Faso. The fact that I am so confused about the world, its problems and how one should go about solving them is a testament to the amount in which I have learned. Before I came here, the ills of the world were a simple, albeit large problem, requiring a simple solution. I thought that perhaps the only obstacle was the question of means. I was confident that the solution was realized, but simply not yet attainable. I know better now. I know I have no idea.

I guess it sounds like I am a little jaded. I think I am. But I wear that label with an odd sense of pride. I am jaded, but hopeful. I am jaded, but I have not lost touch with my passion in life: Understanding people. It is easy to get lost in the nebulous complexities of development theory. When I feel I am becoming too detached, I think about the friendships created here, I think about the connections made, and yes, some of the work I have done. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have the utmost faith in the grassroots level of development. It is indisputably the most human level, but all the same the most volatile. To find out what I mean, keep your eyes peeled for my next post, which will probably be written in the next 12 hours. After all, I am sure you all would rather hear about what I am doing as opposed to what I am thinking.

In any event, enjoy the day. And of course, be well.

j