What an interesting week this has been. I’ve been spending lots of time with the people of my village. It felt good to be home after spending a week at the “doorways” conference (a conference on alternative methods to violence in schools). It was nice to be back in the calm that is my tiny village with my family and my puppy. I went back to visiting with everyone and going to the school every day. This past Tuesday there was a meeting for the CP1 and 2 teachers as well as the CE1 teacher. Since I usually spend most of my time working with CE1 because those kids really have a hard time with reading, the teacher thought it would be a good idea for me to just take over her class while she was gone so that the kids weren’t just missing school. I didn’t think this was a very good idea considering that I am not qualified to teach 60+ 3^rd graders for 8 hours. Yago however thought this was a great idea and he agreed that I would do it. The next day I show up to this classroom of sweet faced children. Yago gave them a talk on how to behave and that I was in charge and we were going to read. Etc. Etc. He left the class confident that it was go over well…Truth be told, the class started off well. The kids took turns reading out loud and I would correct them and help them when they struggled. I let my guard down a little which turned out to be a huge mistake. I literally had control of the class for a grand total of an hour before things got a little out of hand. In essence, the kids realized that I was not going to hit them and decided that they weren’t scared and could act the way they wanted to. I managed to hold down the fort until lunch time. I didn’t actually want to come back in the afternoon and just take turns reading out loud again. Yago looked sad when I told him, so I gave in and came back. The kids behaved even worse after lunch. One kid even threw a bench. Lets just say that they day was exhausting and that is why I prefer to do things on a small scale outside of the classroom. On a brighter note the kids were happy (for what reason I don’t know, maybe they were just happy to spend the day with me). That night I had dinner with the guys. Yago cooked dinner for me, Issaka and Mr. Ouedraogo. It was fun, but his cooking made me horrifically sick afterwards haha.

Sometimes a random turn of events will lead you to have a very weird but awesome day. I went into Leo yesterday to celebrate Hugo’s birthday and get a little work done. While I was sitting around having lunch with Hugo, Sam, Bill and Lindsay  I get received a phone call from Andrew on the food security committee. He asked me to come in to Ouaga to work on a project proposal for a grant that USAID is giving to the Food Security Committee. This was going to be very tricky. I told him that I could make it the next day but he was really wanting it to be the same day. It seemed pretty impossible considering that I didn’t have any clothes with me and that transport goes to and from my site once a day only. It turns out that nothing is impossible with Yago as your homologue. I called Yago on the phone and told him that I had a “petite proleme” He gets really happy when I come to him with problems because he is always telling me how he is here to help. I explain the situation and he said “oh my God what can we do?!” I told him that I didn’t know, and after a few minutes of thoughtful silence he tells me that he is going to call his brother in Leo (who is a police officer) to give me a ride back home and then drive me back to Leo so that I could get on a bus to Ouaga. He really made it happen, so I was able to go all the way back to my house and back in time to catch the bus at 1700 and head out to Ouaga. The bus ride was pretty enjoyable and uneventful like I hope every bus ride could be. I made it in to Ouaga and biked to the Transit House. Yago called me to make sure that I made it safely and I told him that seriously I could not thank him enough for his help, he told me that he was really really happy that he could help. I <3 him. I was pleasantly surprised that Maren was here too! Andrew and I went out for a beer and talked about the project proposal and it was really awesome. Although very last minute and unplanned I’m actually pretty glad to be in Ouaga for a few days.