More Model School

I'm going to try to update this site a few more times before I go to my site at the end of August. After that I will probably only be able to get to the internet once a month maximum because there is no cybercafe in my village, in fact there is only electricity (for the lucky few who have it, which does not at the moment include me) between certain hours of the day-in the early morning and at night.

This week we changed classes in model school. I am now teaching two classes of 5eme SVT (biology). Yesterday and today my students were not respecting me, so I told them that I would kick the next person out of class who talked. Then the next person who did talk looked surprised when I asked him to leave. I really don't like yelling at students, but I had to to get this particular student to leave-yes that's right he actually feigned refusing to leave the room when I told him to. Anyway, this situation is included to demonstrate how different gender roles are in Burkina Faso. Most of my colleagues would agree with the suggestion that if I were male I would not have as many intial problems with discipline. Most male students don't even know how to respond to a female authority figure because there are so few female teachers here. That's not to say that male teachers don't have their share of problems.

This week we've been talking a lot about how to equalize the playing field for girls in Burkina. At my future site there will probably be less than 5 girls in the highest level class. There are so many problems causing girls lack of school attendance. Today one of our female trainers told us that the only reason her father let her go to school was because the family did not yet have a son to send. By the time she did have a brother she was so far along that they let her keep going, and she also received scholarships. Buying books and paying school fees is expensive, so for families who live in the village (as PCVs like to say-or in rural areas), sometimes they can only send one child, if any children at all. This causes an imbalance among the genders, especially at the high school level.

The other program training with us (Girls Education and Empowerment) is working to increase the enrollment of girls in primary school. But it is also part of our project plan to encourage girls in the classroom. For me, just being there as a female science teacher will (hopefully) challenge people's perceptions because they are extremely rare here. Some of the girls, even in model school, greatly lack self esteem and confidence. Getting a secondary education should help them obtain these things. Okay, okay, before I run away with my idealism I will say that it is not always easy to change minds. I am nervous about the reaction of the villagers to my presence.

In other news we had a gigantic rainstorm last weekend. It rained for 12 hours straight, and both my courtyard and street were flooded. Let me just say that going out to the latrine in the middle of a downpour is not my favorite thing.