A pheonix sort of entry
I dont want to lie, the last couple weeks have been rough. The good news is that the study from hell is done. The perfectionist in me says I still need to tweak it to make sure its stylistically uniform, and go through it for grammar. And I still need to translate a chunk of it anyway so the community will be able to read it.
oh well to that.
But today I got some 70 letters from the students of one of my old french teachers saying how courageous I was and whatever. Plus at least one very star crossed love letter.
I havent read them all yet, but it was exactly what I needed. I had really been needing support.
Ive been Ouaga this week doing follow up training this week. Its been insanely helpful. Im now hoping to be able to select and train village midwives in the next six months and start a sort of community health insurance system. I hope the community gets behind these ideas because I plan on taking as little of a role as possible. It will be more sustainable that way.
There are all sorts of politics in this. If the community does the things I propose only because I am there, it stands a far greater likely hood of falling apart when I leave. Really I cant know if any of it will fall apart after I leave. You just give people the information and hope they have the sense to help themselves. Its a hard thing to reconcile though, two years on a big plan that might be meaningless in the end. Its really hard for me to impart my perspective on the world right now. I came here to understand poverty and am at a point where I feel like I cant explain it to anyone in the states. The things Im seeing, everything...
Ive actually thought about writing a book. Actually I came here being very anti writing a book because its such a cliche... If I was going to write something, I would want to make it journalistic. There are things Id like to say to American policy makers and the general population about this country. I dont know if I have it in me to write it though. I feel like I am not able to write the things I would want to say. Maybe my thoughts are too jumbled. Maybe Im just intimidated over the weight of it. There are a great many things I havent said lately because I was struggling with the idea of making them coherent and in terms people in the states would understand.
I did want to say one thing though, about education. You can create a system of education that begets people who think for themselves, just as you can form a system that begets cattle. The Burkinabe have the latter. Any initiative, any leadership, any thinking outside of the box is stamped out by the system of memorization, the huge class sizes, the systematic humiliation. It is not stamped out by the lack of education itself, unless you count how they socialize themselves in terms of humiliation.
In my Jan 20 entry I said that they needed to get their kids through high school. I didnt say the system was a good one. I was saying that even 60 percent of kids through a school system that breads followers would be far more conducive to development of their country than what they have.
If it was up to me, Id focus on teaching the kids in high school major entrepreneurial skills, then slacken certain laws, such as letting people own the land they live on and not charging excessive fees in their banks and making the rules on what it would take to be an official registered business more lax. I dont know enough about business to be specific about this and cant know what problems would arise from it. I do know that if you educate people for jobs that arent there (because every salaried job here is a government paid job) without giving them the skills and the avenues to pursue their own private business ventures you only further exacerbate the brain drain.
There is a very compelling reason to keep the system the way it is. The elite class dont want their kids to have to compete for the few salaried jobs and lose. What revenue is generated from each individual paying for school is pittance in terms of the cost of what it takes to run it. They implemented the system in the first place because of a stipulation from the World Bank. Now they dont want to change it. And while it might only be the equivalent of four dollars to enroll a kid in the equivalent of the first grade, enrolling all 10 kids in school gets honestly burdensome for a poor family, not to mention how much middle and high school costs.
What does end up happening is you have a good many people who start out in school and drop out in the third grade or second etc, because they couldnt cut the class sizes, because they werent picking up the french only curriculum fast enough when french is not their first language, because they plainly dont have the money, or most disturbingly, because the fathers wont spend it on their kids. Theyd rather spend it on eating pork. The last is extremely sickening to me and I very much hope it doesnt happen often.
I dont know how to end this entry so I guess Im just going to be anticlimactic.
oh well to that.
But today I got some 70 letters from the students of one of my old french teachers saying how courageous I was and whatever. Plus at least one very star crossed love letter.
I havent read them all yet, but it was exactly what I needed. I had really been needing support.
Ive been Ouaga this week doing follow up training this week. Its been insanely helpful. Im now hoping to be able to select and train village midwives in the next six months and start a sort of community health insurance system. I hope the community gets behind these ideas because I plan on taking as little of a role as possible. It will be more sustainable that way.
There are all sorts of politics in this. If the community does the things I propose only because I am there, it stands a far greater likely hood of falling apart when I leave. Really I cant know if any of it will fall apart after I leave. You just give people the information and hope they have the sense to help themselves. Its a hard thing to reconcile though, two years on a big plan that might be meaningless in the end. Its really hard for me to impart my perspective on the world right now. I came here to understand poverty and am at a point where I feel like I cant explain it to anyone in the states. The things Im seeing, everything...
Ive actually thought about writing a book. Actually I came here being very anti writing a book because its such a cliche... If I was going to write something, I would want to make it journalistic. There are things Id like to say to American policy makers and the general population about this country. I dont know if I have it in me to write it though. I feel like I am not able to write the things I would want to say. Maybe my thoughts are too jumbled. Maybe Im just intimidated over the weight of it. There are a great many things I havent said lately because I was struggling with the idea of making them coherent and in terms people in the states would understand.
I did want to say one thing though, about education. You can create a system of education that begets people who think for themselves, just as you can form a system that begets cattle. The Burkinabe have the latter. Any initiative, any leadership, any thinking outside of the box is stamped out by the system of memorization, the huge class sizes, the systematic humiliation. It is not stamped out by the lack of education itself, unless you count how they socialize themselves in terms of humiliation.
In my Jan 20 entry I said that they needed to get their kids through high school. I didnt say the system was a good one. I was saying that even 60 percent of kids through a school system that breads followers would be far more conducive to development of their country than what they have.
If it was up to me, Id focus on teaching the kids in high school major entrepreneurial skills, then slacken certain laws, such as letting people own the land they live on and not charging excessive fees in their banks and making the rules on what it would take to be an official registered business more lax. I dont know enough about business to be specific about this and cant know what problems would arise from it. I do know that if you educate people for jobs that arent there (because every salaried job here is a government paid job) without giving them the skills and the avenues to pursue their own private business ventures you only further exacerbate the brain drain.
There is a very compelling reason to keep the system the way it is. The elite class dont want their kids to have to compete for the few salaried jobs and lose. What revenue is generated from each individual paying for school is pittance in terms of the cost of what it takes to run it. They implemented the system in the first place because of a stipulation from the World Bank. Now they dont want to change it. And while it might only be the equivalent of four dollars to enroll a kid in the equivalent of the first grade, enrolling all 10 kids in school gets honestly burdensome for a poor family, not to mention how much middle and high school costs.
What does end up happening is you have a good many people who start out in school and drop out in the third grade or second etc, because they couldnt cut the class sizes, because they werent picking up the french only curriculum fast enough when french is not their first language, because they plainly dont have the money, or most disturbingly, because the fathers wont spend it on their kids. Theyd rather spend it on eating pork. The last is extremely sickening to me and I very much hope it doesnt happen often.
I dont know how to end this entry so I guess Im just going to be anticlimactic.