Camp des Leaders de l'Avenir

Hi all,

It's been awhile since I rapped at ya. I was extremely busy during the month of July planning and conducting a youth camp for 6th graders in Ouahigouya. It was great. We talked about gender, sex, hygiene, being a leader, malaria, nutrition, and a lot more, played games and soccer, had a field trip to a library, sang songs, etc, etc, etc. It was a blast and a great experience doing so many things I've never done before; teaching classes, planning activities to keep kids occupied 17 hours per day. It was exhausting but amazing.

The video above is a song I wrote for the camp called "Nous Sommes l'Avenir" (We are the Future). Super cheesy and probably poor French, but catchy and the kids seemed to like it. Sorry the video sucks.

Here are the lyrics:

Strophe 1 :

Nous nous couchons sous nos moustiquaires pendant tout la nuit

Ce que nous mangeons est bien nutritif

Et quand nous quittons le latrine nous lavons les mains

Comme il y a quelque chose de faire lendemain

Refrain (x2):

Nous sommes l’avenir (écho)

Nous sommes les leaders (écho)

Strophe 2 :

Comme une fleur nos corps vont faire beaucoup de changements

Et avec ceux, les nouvelles sentiments

Nous devenons des hommes et femmes mais nous n’avons pas peur

Car nous voyons nos places dans le futur

(Refrain)

Strophe 3 :

(Les Garçons) : Nous aidons maman préparer le Tô et faisons le lessive

Nous les voulons pour améliorer la vie

(Les Fils) : Si nous étudions bien et travaillons dur et levons nos voix

Quand nous devenons grandes nous pouvons faire n’importe quoi

(Refrain)

After the camp finished I suddenly found myself with nothing to do for a month. The first week was nice and relaxing: I gardened, helped my homologue cultivate a little, played music, and read a lot. But I am not one to remain idle for long and started getting bored and antsy. I went out looking for work and actually found a women's group which somehow found time away from the fields to make some soap. I want to talk to them about some other product possibilities like Neem Cream or Moringa Powder. I also just met some guy that organized a campaign last year to clean up all the water sachets and other random plastic shit littering the town and use the sachets as tree nursery pots. I literally had this same idea a few months ago, but had no idea how to motivate people, since Burkinabe do nothing for free. The way he did it was to make it a contest: whoever collects the most sachets by weight wins a wheelbarrow, a shovel, and some other goodies. He gives the sachets to schools, the idea being that they’ll plant trees in them. Genius. I’m going to help him with next year’s edition by providing seeds and doing tree planting demonstrations at the schools and helping him tighten up his budget a bit. I’m really excited about this.

So things are slow, but well. I'm looking forward to the upcoming Bike Tour in September and should have some pretty interesting things to report after that.

Love,
Dan