Burkina Faso Team 2012

Over the past two days, a lot has changed for the Education and Computing groups.  On Sunday, we attended church with the Watts', two SIM missionaries along with their daughters.  Not only was the service in french, translated into moore (more-ay), but it was also 2 and a half hours long.  For the first hour of the service, it was primarily singing (in french), along with an introduction of the visitors aka us.  Luckily, Malcolm Watts was there to introduce us in french.  After the pastor's sermon, we took communion then were asked to come up to the front of the congregation in order for the church to great us.  Everyone in the church was so welcoming to us we were grateful to be allowed to worship with them on Sunday.  They even asked us to prepare a song for next Sunday......I hope they like Jesus loves me!

The remainder of Sunday was definitely a day of much needed rest.  We cooked, cleaned, read, did laundry and laid around until our pick up game of ultimate Frisbee at four!   The group consisted of people staying at the SIM guesthouse, SIM missionaries, CMA missionaries, and some of the ISO students.  This game was a lot more intense than some of us had expected.....leaving a few a bit sore the next day.


This morning we had an early rise, with Computing heading out to the Peace Corps at 8, and the Education waking up to say goodbye....then go back to sleep. Around 8, Diana came for us (computing) to head over to the school she works and lives at.  Diana is a member of the Peace Corps placed at an IT teaching position 20 minutes outside of Ouaga at a school for middle school girls.  As a boarding school, the girls pay a tuition along with living inside the campus grounds.  Once we got there we begun to assess.....and delegate.  Many of the computers were stacked high in piles in order for us to test.  Already beating Diana's hopes of two, we currently have 4 of the computers running with new software on them, hoping to fix more so they can have better computers for their students to use. 

The Education group left for Yako this morning to teach many different subjects at a local orphanage.  With everyone gone from the SIM guest house except for the computing group, we hope everyone is having fun at their destinations and can't wait to see everyone on Saturday!

from Ouaga, over and out.

For the past two days, the Education and Computing groups have been busy at work, leaving little to no time to blog because we are all exhausted.  Yesterday (Friday), we all had an early rise to go see the Mossi King, the leader of a large ethnic group throughout all Burkina Faso.  Every Friday of the week, the king is presented in front of his court, judging if there is a threat against the Mossi people, signifying it in either red or white clothing. 

After the Mossi King, the Computing group headed back to work with John, finishing up our lessons with the teachers and updating more software on their computers. The Education group observed kindergarten through 5th grade at the ISO. They use an American curriculum so it wasn't too different from a classroom in the states, however the classes were very diverse and although it was an English speaking school, not many of the students were native English speakers. We were able to observe how the teachers handled the mixture of students with different backgrounds.

On Friday evening, John welcomed us into his home for dinner with his family, along with his friend Daniel, his wife and child.  When in Africa, some things don't always work out, like driving to Johns house realizing the entire town of Ouaga was out of power (we just hadn't realized because SIM has a back up generator).  As we sat in the dark for a while, John ran around the house trying to get a generator working, also trying to fix the "stupid French outlets" in his house.  Eventually, John, Daniel, and Scott got the generator running so we could eat our dinner in the light. 

On Saturday morning, the entire team headed out to visit the Garibou boys, a local ministry lead by Kate Royal. Sons of families are given to the Mosque to learn the Koran, along with going out and begging for money.  If they don't come back with money, they are punished by the leaders of the Mosque. The Garibou is a safe haven for the boys where they play games, make crafts, eat, along with learning different stories of the Bible.  It was a great visit for the team to see how God was working through Kate to evangelize to the boys who have been dealt a rough life.


While the rest of the team was busy with odd jobs, Katie, Dani and Austin had quite the adventure. They originally prepared to go to a soccer match but when the plans fell through, they ended up being led by Michel (an employee at SIM) to the far outskirts of Ouaga in a taxi that was held together by thin string (there wasn't even a key in the ignition, yet it was running?). In these suburbs, families can buy a plot of land (for the equivalent of 60 USD) to make their home. They are in agreement, however, with the government that every few years the government will come to survey the land to determine where roads should be built. Sometimes, people's houses are destroyed because they are in the way of the roads determined by the government. Michel's area was surveyed recently and while he did not lose his home, his parents lost a significant portion of their yard. In the middle of these suburbs there is a large open-air market where Michel led Katie, Dani and Austin. They were also able to observe the collection and method of making clay bricks to build homes. Donkeys are used to transport the bricks, which are left to dry for three days before they are ready for use. A definate highlight of the trip was the amount of children who flocked towards us wherever we went. As mentioned in earlier posts, children LOVE to see their pictures. They were fascinated by seeing white people and would follow us around, even chasing after us while we drove away in the taxi! After what seemed like a 5 mile walk on dusty dirt paths, we visited at Michel's home before returning back to SIM.



KWHR Meter team wiring up meter #1



Making an illegal border crossing at "Triple Point"

Face to face with a warthog... just kidding, it was empty.

 

With the week coming to an end, the computing group was back at SIM with John teaching their teachers more advanced uses of word, along with an intro to excel.  We found that as soon as they picked up basics of word, they can use the computer in general with more ease and were able to discover more things with word and excel.  After we taught the teachers for the school in the morning, we went back in the afternoon to install Windows along with Microsoft office on some of the machines, updating a few from Windows 98 to Windows XP.  We have one more day with John, hoping to update and install the software on the rest of the computers we have that are outdate.

Katie, Dani, Lauren and Angela were able to go see Angela's Compassion child, Abby, at Abby's Compassion center. We were greeted warmly and offered the porridge the children would eat for breakfast (made of ground millet with some sugar). Let's say this would not be a preferred breakfast food among our group. Unlike Katie's Compassion visit last Thursday, the Education group did not observe classrooms. Instead, they played recess like games with the kids. Hand clapping games, such as Miss Mary Mack and others, were an exciting event with the kids. There is no better feeling than watching children smile, and they sure did at our hand games along with seeing themselves in our pictures we took. Once back at the SIM guest house, preparations were made for a lunch including Abby, one of her friends and her case worker along with Gal-yam (Katie's child), one of his friends and his case worker. Traditional American hamburgers, french fries and cupcakes were the food of choice and the kids enjoyed the meal. Decorating the cupcakes, playing with balloons, coloring, playing in the sand box (more like dirt/dust box), playing bowling and swinging were other highlights of the visit. This was a great opportunity for both Katie and Angela to interact with their own sponsor child. Gal-yam, Abby, and their friends enjoyed a goodbye gift of a balloon with a piece of dental floss (in place of string). Oh, the joys of simple things.

As we wrap up a productive week, we ask for prayers for Doug and Angela who will be starting their journey to Mahadaga early tomorrow morning where they will be until Monday visiting the Engineering group (and Kate).

Love you all and goodnight from Ouaga!

Bonjour/bonsoir from Mahadaga! These past two days have been the typical breakfast by 6:30 mornings for Charlie, Kate. and I (Jean) to be ready to head over the center to get working by 7:15. The KWHR guys have been sleeping in a little later claiming to have everyone up by 7:20ish or so we've been told. So far, Dave, Kevin, and Dr. Fish have made significant progress in debugging some of their software issues and have been able to start testing and prepping for installations on a couple different homes in this SIM compound. Because some of the equipment required to do some testing only worked on 120V outlets (the house the guys are staying in use 220V), the KWHR team asked around and found out that the Walsh's home had 120V. As the Walsh family is currently in the U.S., the KWHR team borrowed keys and decided to haul their equipment over there temporarily to get some testing with the meter done. More exciting news to come about the preliminary results. As for the tricycles, a lot of progress has been made in continuing to implement the new axle design for the existing electric tricycles. Yesterday, after much clamping, cutting with hacksaws, hammering, tightening, wheel building, welding, etc., Charlie and Jean were able to successfully mount and install the new axles on Yembapou's trike. Compared to the old axle set, this new design has axles almost double the diameter of the previous design (going from 12mm to 20mm) in addition to incorporating higher quality hubs. Though this solution is not necessarily meant to be a long-term solution, as the hubs used are fairly expensive mountain bike hubs, we are hoping this should extend the life of the axles significantly, at least until we find a more sustainable fix for our problem. In addition to axle work, we were able to finish installing the battery pack for Etienne’s green trike which is now set and ready to go. Next week, we are looking at finishing up making a couple tweaks on Yempabou’s axles and then working on installing new axles on Djebade’s electric tricycle (built by the site team in the summer of 2010).

Etienne and Jean

The Computing team once again was working with John at SIM, but this time instead of doing what they're best at, fixing computers, they were teaching the teachers at SIM the basics of how to use computers.  We split up the sessions into two with Scott speaking in the first session on files, folders and organization, with the second session being intro to Microsoft Word, lead by Kara and Austin.  The teachers at the school had different skill levels on the computer, ranging from no experience at all to moderate use.  They all enjoyed learning about certain things they could do on the computer, especially when using a word processor.

The Education group went to visit Joseph who runs a school in the outskirts of Ouaga. He is a Burkinabae man who moved to Oklahoma, but after being called by God to come back to Burkina to spread the gospel he fully trusted the Lord and let Him lead the path of the next steps of Joseph's journey. He then started a school with 12 kids on his porch, which grew into a school made up of 240 students. His testimony was such an inspirational story of faith in God and how he spreads the Word in a dominantly Muslim area. Even after being threated with machetes from a group of Muslim elders, he is able to still be a Christian leader in his community. We were all so inspired by his story and want to donate money/supplies to him and his growing dream (the school). After a tour of the school from Joseph, the team was delighted to find two camels approaching them on the road. Katie and Lauren tried to ask the men riding the camels if they could take a picture of the camels, however, because they only speak French, and the girls know up peu French, there was a major language barrier. Finally, with the help of Joseph, the girls learned that they could in fact take pictures, and that they could sit on the camels if they wanted. Dani got on the camel with the help of Joseph, but before Katie and Lauren could, we were told that we needed to pay. We were able to get some great photos of Dani on the camel before we had to leave.