Doing stuff

OFF STRIKE!! Now it is review time for the end of year tests. Next week the 9th graders will take their tests. Many of them are worried about the tests and others couldn’t care at all. They are just glad that school is over. There is one student in particular that is very good at English. I can use almost my all of my everyday vocab and he is able to understand and even if he doesn’t understand I usually know how to say it in Fulfulde so he learns. The people here are very good at learning languages. The people I sit with will ask me what things are in English and after I tell them once they will remember it.
Also the people that I sit with want to know so much about America and the world. They are smart inquisitive people but they don’t get the proper schooling. Today they were trying to go through the months of the year and none of them could do it. The age range was from a 15 year old seventh grader up to an old man of about 60. Only one of the people that I sit with went passed 9th grade, but he didn’t graduate. He is the one who says the least but when it is just me and him there we have good conversations and you can tell that he is very smart. When I write numbers in my phone to show them how much things cost in America he is the only one who knows how to read them.
The end of the school year means that high school students are returning to Konna from Sevare and Mopti. This means that there are people here that I haven’t met yet. A few of them really like to play basketball. They are far better than the other people that I have played with. There is one person who was on a basketball team in Gao. He is a really good ball handler but none of them can shoot very well. It also doesn’t help that the hoop is only about 8 feet high and that the court is full of holes. I think that I am going to try to write a proposal so that I can improve the court and get them a second hoop. Also they complain about the bats that live in the roof of their school. Every night when I play basketball around sunset the bats fly out of the vents in the roof by the hundreds. I think there is a simple solution to this, wait until all the bats leave at night and then put up simple pieces of screen over the vents so the bats can’t return in the morning. I think I saw it once on Dirty Jobs and I think it will work here. Once school lets out for the summer I am going to try to do improvements to the school. Also they picked a space for me to paint a few murals. I am going to do the world map, solar system as well as the evaporation cycle. At the local doctors office I am going to paint a food groups mural. Here there are only three food groups.
I went to Ryne’s site for a couple of days to take pictures of her project. They are rebuilding one of the dykes that helps them control the flood plan so they can control how much water there is on their rice fields. It was a big undertaking. There were one hundred people a day working on the project and they worked every other day. It was a lot of hard labor and they worked all day long in the hot sun. When I came to take pictures they got very excited and everyone wanted to take pictures.
Last night we had the first real rain. I was sleeping on the roof and all of a sudden the wind started blowing extra hard.


Lightning in the distance always a tease
Tonight is different it’s a stronger breeze
The dust is here but where is the rain
The air gets cold am I insane
I feel a drop and then some more
I think it time to go indoors
House is too hot to sleep
I go outside to take a peak
Rain has come not a moment too soon
Wind and rain is it a monsoon
Morning after cool and easy