The First Big Work Day in Mahadaga

January 9, 2009

Hello all, sorry you're going to be receiving two blogs today (probably) instead of one yesterday and one today. I had hoped to get this out yesterday, but once the time to send out e-mails passes, it has to wait until the next day. Anyways, today (Friday) was a great day for getting work done. This morning 9 of us went to observe some classes at the Handicap Center - two groups went to classes for deaf children while my group (Julie, Dan, and I) went to a class for the blind. The kids for the most part were very well behaved. As far as I could tell with my horrible understanding of French, our teacher read a short story about a person or two people, asked them questions about the story, and had them repeat certain phrases from the story to help them learn French. They also worked on writing Braille with special boards. Finally, before the break, they worked on their math, which they seemed to struggle with a bit. The kids had to take four objects (rocks, cardboard blocks, etc.) and make four a few different ways (two and two, one and three, three and one). Other groups learned a little bit of international/French sign language in their classes. Dave worked in the shop all day on the trike project, playing with the chain tensioner and testing it out on the road (all the while gaining a group of 50ish children behind him). Dan and Bekah have also begun to help with some organization of the accounting system to make data more easily available when needed.

Later, some of us went exploring random small paths that go off the main road. Along the way, we were charting out the locations of various family complexes. Katie P will then take a random sample from our random paths to begin her survey for her project. Much later, and after a slight battle between Dave, some Raid (insect poison),and I and some termites/ants outside the main house, we met with a missionary named Betty (for worried parents - it wasn't really a battle). She has been here for over 50 years, coming to Burkina Faso when she was only 26ish years old! Also tonight (Friday night) Angela, Bethany, and I met with the Handicap Center teachers. We presented the various items such as a Braille printer, a book for the blind, and such that we had packed away for them. Also at that time, we showed them the little educational robots (Beebot, Probot) and talked about how they could be precursors to something our engineers could make in the future. Tomorrow (today) we will have a more extensive meeting with (I think) even more teachers from the area to present our ideas. Finally, at the end of the day, we had a wonderful meal of chicken, rice (with a Cabbage/Peanut oil based sauce on top), garlic bread, and pineapple. Also with us for our meal were Betty, her friend Mary, and a Burkinabe young adult named Daniel. And.that about brings you up to speed for Friday. I hope that you didn't mind my lateness or the length of my post! Thanks for reading and please continue to keep us in your prayers.

-Jeff

P.S. - If you need/want to contact the team while we are here, we get/receive email once a day. The email address here is mcj09@simbf.uuplus.com. Make sure, though, that you put the name of the person you are sending it to in the title of the email so that we can sort them easily. Thanks!