And To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street

I don't live on Mulberry Street, but the title often comes to mind as I walk/taxi around my part of the world.  In fact, I don't think my street even has a name.  We call it  "Our Road" or the "Chinese Road" because the Chinese financed/built it, or we call it "The Road Between the Old Bridge and the New Bridge", or "The Road That Goes the Opposite Way from Burkina Faso."  There is no street sign to be seen.  So maybe, just maybe I'll call it Mulberry Street until further notice.

Our street is a new one and this is what it looked like when we moved in almost 3 years ago.  We watched the road building process from start to finish.

This is what it looks like now:

It is very noisy and often busy, especially with some major road construction going on that moves a lot of traffic to our street.  Big trucks, motorcycles, taxis, cars, mini buses and a whole lot more pass in front of our house 24/7.

Every day as I walk, take taxis or even just step out of my gate onto the sidewalk in front of my house, I see fascinating sights.  I carry my little camera wherever I go and I thought it would be fun to share some of the fun things I see on my jaunts up and down my street.

This noon as we walked home from the office,  I saw this: (those are some heavy pots)

 

and Tom saw this!

As we walked out of our gate at 4:00, our local "Tupperware" dealer had parked his load and was taking a nap on our front stoop.  Our thermometer read 110 degrees so it was a well-deserved break under one of the two trees on the block.

That's what I saw on Mulberry Street today.  Stay tuned for more.  Have a wonderful day.

The Grades are Posted!

Coming from a land of "computer-generated everything" and the non-negotiable value of privacy, I never cease to be amazed at the seemingly utter lack of privacy in our host country. 

Not wrong, just different...

 
This week I saw another example.  Last week I was meeting with a student for Bible study on campus and as we were walking to catch a taxi, we noticed a large crowd of students trying to catch a glimpse of something that was thumb-tacked onto an outside wall of the English Department. It didn't take too long to realize that the results from several recent exams had been posted. 

I saw the name of someone I knew and two of her grades for two different classes:  a 17/20 on one which is very good, and a 3,50/20 on the other one which is pretty bad.  Everyone's scores on the exams, including their first and last names were posted for the whole world to see (or at least anyone who happened to walk through the English Department).  

The grading scale is out of 20 points.  In French, they use a comma rather than a period in decimals.  As you can see,  there are also a couple words noting the meaning of the grade:

                       16-20 is Très Bien (Very Good);
                       14 -15 out of 20 are Bien (Good);
                       12 -13 are Assez Bien (Average);
                       10 -11 are Passable (Passing)
                       and below 10 is Ajourné (Didn't pass, take it again)

Sometimes students scratch out their names if they are ashamed of their score.

I tried to explain the extreme effort educators in my home country put forth to give the students the privacy they consider so vital to their well-being and self-esteem.  Even parents aren't allowed to see the grades if the student hasn't given them permission to access them.  The response here was a quizzical "why?"  

Did I already mention that just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong?

Niamey Farm Show

It was fair time this past week in Niamey.   Saturday morning we grabbed a taxi and spent 2 hours wandering around the exhibitions.   We LOVED it!  So many fun things to see. It reminded us of a state or county fair in the US because every region in Niamey brought the biggest and best of their produce, including animals, crops, vegetables, machinery , etc.

This mama goat had 4 kids.  

The baby camel with his mama.

A cow who birthed triplets.

I'd never seen such clean and white sheep and goats.  They washed up well.  

There were onions and more onions and all sorts of ways to use onions. 

Spear-head millet.

Tom loved visiting with the vendors.  

He even was interviewed by the local TV station.  When asked what it was he was hoping to see here but hadn't seen, his comment was  "a tractor".  

Lots of different beans.

And, of course, no fair is complete without the giant pumpkins.  The largest weighed 40 kgs or 88 pounds.

Tom loved checking out the wheat, raised in Agadez.  It looks like ours but we know it didn't survive any winter temps so it's not hard winter wheat. 

Hot peppers. I love the colors. 

That's some tall sugar cane. 

There wasn't too much machinery there;  except what could be run by human or animal power.

A ox pulled plow and other essential tools of the trade. 

A peanut sheller and a peanut oil press (below).

You can take the boy from the farm but you can't take the farm out of the boy!  A great time.

Three Months of Silence

The blogging silence doesn't mean that nothing has been happening Chez Dorsch!   It's time to catch everyone up with the events of the past 3 months.

It all started with this...

all four of our children were able to celebrate Christmas with us.  Plus we added another member to our family,  but we'll talk about that later.

Christmas was absolutely wonderful; the days went by so quickly and were filled with fun and laughter and visiting.  It seems like so long ago. Voila,  some of  my favorite pictures:

After celebrating Christmas with our church family, we shared some of the joy we have in celebrating Christ's birth with our dear neighbors.  We sang, visited and gave them plates full of cake.

The time wouldn't have been complete without the annual arm-wrestling match, this year presided over by an official, unbiased referee!  (It was officially a tie.)

On December 27th we road-tripped to Ouagadougou, an eight hour drive from Niamey.

It felt like going home for our children and we tried to see as many of our "old haunts" as possible.  It was at a favorite restaurant that Kyle Albrecht asked our Erika to be his wife.  She accepted and we are thrilled.

A Christmas we'll remember for a long time.

The engagement of Kyle and Erika gave me a reason to spend a bit of time in Kansas in February.   We shopped for a wedding dress and made lots of wedding plans.

 I can't show those pictures but I did get to experience "snow days".  I LOVED it and took a lot of pictures to try to portray to our Nigerien friends just what snow is.  "Does it make noise like rain when it comes down?"  I'd never thought about that before.  I've been tempted to defrost my freezer and save the ice shavings in order to give them a better idea of snow!

It was a special gift to be in Kansas and to be snowed in for a couple of days.

Now I'm back in Niamey where snow is unimaginable and today's temp was 105 degrees.