Genius

 So my brother got married yesterday. Today I talked to my family and it made my heart hurt. So to make it even worse/better I got you all this genius poem that I cannot stop rereading.


Since feeling is first by E.E. Cummings


since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

African fables

I went out with a Burkinabe the other night and near the end of our conversation he told me several african fables that I will now share with you because I can.

First one I didn't really understand so we'll skip it. Next one was about a beautiful woman who was great but never spoke. Her father was the chief of the village and he said that the person who could get her to speak would get to marry her. Well all the men from all over came and tried to get her to speak. They told jokes, sad stories and gave her gifts but nothing worked. Then all the animals came. The lion- nothing, zebra- nope, all the animals came and none succeeded. Finally the hare came to try it out. Now the woman had a little puppy that she loved more than anything, she took it with her everywhere and she loved that little dog. Well the hare came around and brought a plate of yogurt and a plate of to. He ate the yogurt and offered some to the dog. The dog took it. Then he raised his arm, the dog raised its little paw, then he took some of the to and stuck it up his butt.The little puppy pawed at the to and got ready to stick it up his butt also but the woman yelled 'No! stop it! Why would you do that? Why would you make my dog do that? Basically she went off the handle on this hare (and can you blame her?). The woman was pissed but the cheif was super happy because she spoke and the hare got to marry her. The end.

When I started at him in shock after a while, he looked concerned and asked if I understood and I was like...I think so, it's just real weird... you tell these stories to kids? Because the moral is to do weird to stuff to dogs. -No, no the moral is that the hare won because he was smarter then all the other people and animals.... right, he manipulated the feelings of this woman to win a contest. Curious. Next story.

Fast forward several years, the cheif of this same village is about to kick the bucket. But he has no sons and no heir and he needs to find someone to lead the village when he's gone. So he comes up with a plan. A competition no less! In the middle of the town there is a platform that is very clean, no dust and the chief says that the first person to dance so well and fast on that that they kick up clouds of dust will be the next cheif. Well once again all the people tried and all the animals, but no one could kick up any dust, that platform was too clean, it was just impossible. Then along comes the hare, he puts dirt in the cuffs of his pants and shirt and sets about dancing on the platform. Soon enought there is dust flying everywhere, everyone is super impressed and he gets to be the next cheif. The end.

So what's the moral of that one? If you cheat you can get to be cheif or something else awesome? Yup, he cheated but he was smarter then the other animals and people that's why he got ahead. -But he cheated? So when you tell this to children they will think it's okay to cheat. -No, he was smarter then the others, that's why he got ahead. -...by cheating. Then I told him about the tortoise and the hare. The moral of that story being that you have to work hard to win, you can't do a good job and then slack off at the end, it's got to be a continuous effort- the slow and steady win the race. Nope, if you're smarter it's okay to cheat. Cheat to win.

Land of the upright and honest people my ass.

Humor in the classroom

Funny things that students have done or said:

My hair is growing out now and I have no one to cut it except myself so it's getting a little unruly, but they all really love my white person's hair and demand permission to touch it. That's the literal translation of how they ask it- Madame, I demand permission to touch your hair. Demand granted.

They all really love Justin Bieber and Hannah Montana and one day they asked me if I had seen them and I was like 'No. I'm not a child. I don't like them.' And then they asked me what "stars" I had seen and I thought about it for a while and realized I had seen only the stars/bands they had never heard of/would hate. So they started listing off people like Beyonce, Akon, Michael Jackson and a bunch of others and I was like...no, nope, no no. With each negative answer they got more and more angry and shocked until finally one of them asked Madame vous ne sortez pas? To which I laughed and said 'of course I go out, I just don't go to those concerts. Stars don't walk the street like they do here'. haha. Madame you never go out? oh children.

One day I was wearing a top that really accentuated my farmers tan and a student told me that I should stay out of the sun as much as possible and never tan because it looks really ugly. To which I responded 'haha!' The bluntness of these kids will never ceases to shock me. Really they just like it when my skin is as white as possible.
I was shaking a fellow professors hand today and he was like 'oh you have some chalk on your palm' and I said 'nope, that's just how my skin is' To which he laughed and probably didn't feel embarrassed about.

I had my first Informatique test and a few students wrote some really hilarious resposes. For example- How do you know that the computer is on? By the noise. (These computers are real old and some are very loud)
Name two activites you can do with a computer- one student wrote 'you can type texts.' Which is true and not at all funny except when they write here it's in cursive and they do their x's weird so texts actually looks like 'testes.' ha!
 Another response to that question- name two things you can do with a computer someone wrote- Tuer un president ou voler argent d'une banque. Kill a president or steal money from a bank. It was one of those moments where I wish there had been someone there to see it, like when you fall or do something else really embarrassing, but this was incredible. I read it two times and then immediately tried calling four people- none of whom answered. Curses! I'm sitting there staring at this answer thinking 'what the hell? I mean true you can steal money from a bank so I"ll give you a point for that but I'm worried about this president killing one....what the hell?' Finally someone called me back and I told them about the answer, they were equally and hilariously shocked. I actually forgot about that when I returned the papers, there were over 200 so sue me, so I have no idea what student wrote that. They could kill me somehow with a computer, I don't know.

There is a student named Dorcas, and whenever I read that name I laugh, because...Dorcas. Hilarious and it always reminds me of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

A student asked me if sirens were real. And I was like...sirens? half woman half bird? - No, sirens, half woman- half fish (apparently it means both in french) - Oh! mermaids! Nope, those aren't real. - Really? Because this guy said he saw them. -Nope, those are not at all real. Just a story. At this point I'm laughing and she's just looking at me so dejectedly which only makes me laugh harder. Crushing the dreams of young teens since 2010.

For my english test I had students write out numbers in letters like 63 is sixty-three. And they made some adorable faults like writing 'twoty' or 'sixtyeen' I got a lot of ' ten seventy' for 17, and a few wrote one fivety threety two for 1532. Haha, dummies.

Speaking of my English class, that's a new thing I took over for a teacher who skipped town. The first day, the directrice of the school walked me to class, which made me feel like a child, but she said to the students 'now she's volunteered to take over this class. What do we do for her?' And then I kid you not all 61 of them stood up, clapped and cheered for me, which made me almost die from the adorableness of 61, 9-11 year olds so excited for me to teach them english. Standing ovation. Beat that American teachers.

Also it's really funny teaching days of the week because in french you often don't pronouce h's and the 'th' sound is really hard for them. So they have a lot of trouble with Tuesday and Thursday or Three and Thirteen. It's really hilarious. Sometimes I jut make them repeat it over and over again and then laugh at them. Mean you say? They laugh at me about 80% of the time, I don't feel at all bad about mocking their inability to make the 'th' sound.

When I gave their first test back to them some of them may have cried. Haha, I remember when I cared so much about school that I cried about tests or getting in trouble. Oh the memories.

Also I gave them a tongue twister- sally sells seashells down by the seashore. They thought that was really hilarious and were equally amazed at how fast I could do it. Their minds will be blown once wood chucks start chucking wood.

Adorable

A really adorable thing: Yesterday I was chatting with my neighbor who is currently engaged with three kids, her fiancee lives and works in another city (totally normal here), so they see each other maybe once a month, maybe. When I asked her why she wasn't married to the man who is the father of her 2 year old and 6 year old, she was like well you have to be sure...If you aren't sure after 7 years I don't know that you ever will be, but moving on. She was talking to me about how she saves her money and buys things and then sets them aside until later (people talk about that like it's the most novel idea ever. Yeah, I'm not spending a lot of money right now and these things are cheaper now, so I buy them and then I put them aside so that during the vacation I have all this food saved and I don't have to spend a lot of money!) not only does she set aside food but she sets aside her nice, fancy clothes and perfume and things so that when her man comes around she can look good. Now normally, that idea would sicken me a little bit- getting dressed up for a man but not for yourself, but the way she described it was really adorable and made me wish I had a man to dress up for. awwwww

Speaking of men to dress up for. I had an incredibly frustrating evening dealing with faux types and finding another man here who is the worst (he was telling me about how hard it is managing the 8 different girl friends he has in 8 different cities. Oh I'm sorry I have absolutely no sympathy for you and no I won't find you a correspondent in America who you want to marry soley as a ticket to America. Oh what's that? No I don't have money to give you. Sure you do. No, actually I don't, I reall am poor. No you aren't, you can totally buy me a plane ticket to America. Believe me buddy if I had 2 thousand dollars lying around I wouldn't give it to you), and had basically lost all hope and respect for mankind here in Burkina when my neighbor called me and told me to come over. Naturally I hurried over because that meant food was being cooked, probably some sort of meat. Dog in fact! My neighbor's husband was out of town dealing with the funeral of his uncle and so his friend/collegue at the school had invited his wife over to eat some dog and also so she woudn't spend the evening alone. When I got there he told me that's just how it's done here, what would he tell his friend when he got home? He would ask what he had done for his wife, he wanted to know she'd be taken care of. So he sprung big and buying cokes and cooking up some dog meat. My heart melted a little bit, so nice and decent, didn't want his friends wife to be all alone missing her husband.

Let's not ruin that by reading into it too much.

Random side note: On the way back from watching a soccer practice i saw two ten year olds- a boy and a girl beating the shit out of each other. Like a full on bar fight- running, tackling, wrestling, pummeling. It was terifying! I walked over there and they were pulled a part and i went up to the boy and was like 'hey, you hit girls?' and he said nothing, just looked at the girl with crazy eyes and heaving chest. It was insane! Serious fight, like grown men would have.