Burkina Faso Team 2012

Its that time. The time we all dreaded and our families were all excited for.  After 3 weeks in the beautiful country of Burkina Faso, we are heading back to the United States.  It has been a blessed 3 weeks over here with many different projects accomplished and lives touched.  We are grateful for the opportunity and time we spent over here and are reluctant to go back to the states.  But, it had to happen and here it goes...

Depart Ouaga: Approx 9:20 PM (depending, its Africa time) (4:20 US time)
Arrive in Paris: 6:00 AM (minor stop in Niger) (Midnight US time)

Depart Paris: 10:50 AM (4:50  US time)
Arrive in Dulles: 1:39 PM (make sense? think time difference...)

Angela will have her cell phone on the way back from Dulles for students to inform their parents of our arrival on campus.  Our rough estimated time to be back on campus is 5:14 PM. 




Pray for the plane!
See you all in America :)

And after two weeks apart, we are ALL back together, safe and sound in the SIM guest house in Ouaga. The Yako group came back depressed from leaving the orphans.  The Mahadaga group came back dirty from 8 hours in a non air conditioned van.  But now we are all together for our final days, restarting our constant nights of card games.  Tomorrow we are off to church where we were invited to sing a song (good thing we're all education, computer and engineering majors).

From Ouaga, peace out.

As we, the computing group inherited more and more computers in Apartment 4 at the SIM guest house, it is apparent that our "stupid french outlets" comments are correct.  Nothing in Burkina is grounded, basically  promising a shock to your hand  as soon as you plug in a power cord for a computer. It doesn't hurt you, just startles you, and once you get startled enough, it gets annoying.  Tip of the day: wear shoes when you plug a power cord into an outlet in Burkina Faso.

In other news, we revisited our 6 French netbooks we set up for IMS in the beginning of our trip.  Scott ventured out with Pauline earlier in the morning (being gracious enough to let the students sleep in :) ) to finish the rest of the networking, along with caging the router.  Pauline drove back out to SIM to pick up the rest of us so we could meet the students studying at IMS, along with sitting in the class which our dear friend John was teaching. At the end of the class, Joel Gray an SIM missionary told the students how we had set up the netbooks for them in order to learn, along with us introducing ourselves in our french skills.  All of the students were endlessly grateful for our work at their school, most saying 'Thank you' in English cause they knew we didn't know french!

Diana then joined us for our afternoon, taking us to a local crafts street for some souveneir shopping.  It seemed though as soon as the white people entered the street, they all came swarming.  We are always told to barter for our items, most of the time leading to either a good deal or overwhelming purchase.  Though it was stressful, we enjoyed our shopping trip with Diana and her french speaking assistance. 

This evening we finally got to field test our Acer projector we fixed for someone here.  Slowly our viewing of movies has gotten more and more advanced, finally upgrading to a home theatre with a projector... :)

Over the past couple days, the computing groups finished two projects: setting up Diana's computer lab along with installing a network at CMA.

On Tuesday we returned to CJFL (the school that Diana works at) to continue with our installations and software updates in her lab.  After a long day, Diana a joined us for dinner at one of her favorite local places, coincidentally a Chinese place.  The food there was so good, everyone left with fully bellys along with leftovers.

Wednesday was our last day with Diana at CJFL.  Kara, Austin, Jeremy, and Matt went to CJFL, while Scott went back to SIM Tech to assist John with the remainder of his computers.  We had a few machines at CJFL to fix up along with networking them and rearranging her lab.  With a prediction of only 3 computers hoping to be fixed, we beat Diana's wish fixing 13 out of the 19 computers there, even leaving her with extra ones because we didn't have enough monitors for the computers.


Diana was forever grateful for our assistance in the lab for her middle school girls to use.  While the students were finishing up at CJFL, Scott when back to SIM Tech to gather all of the specs from the lab computers, along with updating any software that was needed for the students and teachers at the school.


Early on Thursday, we headed over to a school that a few of the CMA (Christian Missionary Alliance) Missionaries work with. This school was a fairly nice school for the area that it was in, finding out that it was also a part of the Compassion children program.


We got their only needing to assist with the Ethernet cord going from one building to another, so while Scott and Larry drilled holes and worked the cord through, Austin, Jeremy, and Matt were replacing all of the tiles Scott and Larry took down.  Let's just say they are all thankful to be Computer Science majors (and BIS) along with kara there for moral support taking pictures of their handy work.  When the work was almost done, the children were on their lunch right outside the lab we were in and like every child in Africa, they were fascinated by pictures.  The children were so awesome to play with for the little time that we got to, we feel like the education majors :) Tomorrow we are revisiting our work at IMS to meet some of the students, along with going shopping with our personal tour guide Diana.  A well needed break!

Love from Ouaga

Yesterday, Lauren had the opportunity to teach 4th graders on the area of rectangles. Lauren had a lot of fun with this, and the kids also seemed to enjoy the 'human rectangle', where Lauren drew two large rectangles on the sand with a stick, and had the kids stand in the rectangles to determine the area. Angela also taught in a sixth grade class, on European colonization of Africa.

In the afternoon, one of our new friends from Germany, Anne, took us on a tour of Yako. We stopped at a supermarket, and stocked up on some food, such as crackers and candy. On the way back to the orphanage, we stopped to buy what we thought were peanuts, but they turned out to be a small fruit that is not very good. We ended our night by playing 'Pictionary Down the Lane' with Ruth, our two German friends, and Riddering family, which brought on many laughs. Dani, Katie and Lauren stayed up with Anne and Judith pretty late, being silly and telling jokes.

Today, Angela taught another lesson on measurement with the help of Doug. Doug enjoyed being a human weight, as the children tried to decide how they could balance him on a seesaw. While the adults taught, Dani, Katie and Lauren went on a fieldtrip to a nearby town with Ruth to see the mobile clinic. Unfortunately, by the time they got there, the clinic had already left. On a happier note, Dani was proposed to by one of the guards, but due to circumstances, Dani had to turn him down.

When they got back, the girls led some crafts with the kids with modeling clay. The kids enjoyed taking lots of pictures on their cameras and making 'fleurs' and 'serpants' (flowers and snakes) with the clay. Later this afternoon, the girls and Doug will be going with Ruth to 'la barrage', which is a man made resovoir. Hope all is well in Mahadaga and Ouaga!!!!

Hola from Yako!

We have arrived safely much thanks to Anne, a German student staying with Ruth in Yako, who bought our bus tickets/helped us with our French--basically delivering us in one piece. We were greeted warmly by Ruth, and another family who just moved to Yako with means to help at Sheltering Wings, the nonprofit organization Ruth helps to run in Burkina Faso, consisting of an orphanage and primary school. We arrived just in time to help distribute toys to the orphanage from Toys For Tots, a US Marine sponsored gift program. The children were excited to receive these gifts and it was a meaningful experience for us all.

Today we woke up bright and early (easy now Mahadaga, we were up at the crack of dawn with you--6:30) to prepare for Dani and Katie's lessons. They taught simultaneously in different classrooms; Katie taught multiplication by 3's to second graders and Dani taught the World of Dogs to both 3rd and 4th grade (let's just say there was a miscommunication...). Both lessons went well, however the language barrier was a definite obstacle. All-in-all, it provided a great experience for them to teach in another culture. Angela and Lauren are preparing to give their lessons tomorrow; however this is Africa and we are on Africa time so things may very well change. Prayers would be appreciated for their lessons, whenever they end up teaching them.

Another highlight of the day was visiting two other orphanages in Yako. Yako isn't very big, so having three orphanages is uncommon. All three of the orphanages were full. The other two orphanages were run by Burkinabe so it was interesting to see the difference between them and Ruth's orphanage (an American run program). Most of the kids were very welcoming to us and allowed us to hold, cuddle, and play with them.

Tonight we experienced a prayer/worship session under the stars led by kids from the orphanage. Although mostly in French with some English translation, it was moving to see the love for Christ these kids have. Many of the children were chilly and did not have jackets to wear. If anyone would want to donate small windbreakers (ages newborn to late teens) to the orphanage, please deliver them to any members of our team or send them to Angela directly (Box 3041). These jackets can be new or used. Even though Burkina is much warmer than it is in the US, it is currently winter and it becomes colder when the sun goes down. These donations would be much appreciated! Angela will be sending the donations to the orphanage on February 15th.

Our internet connection is extremely slow and unreliable so we may not be able to post again until we are back in Ouaga on Saturday. But no worries, we are all fine and healthy!

Goodnight from Yako!
And until we see you all again, we will be playing with the precious 19 babies in the orphanage :)
Love, Katie and Dani