So, I'm in Texas for 3 days to train our sales team... and Jim, one of the sales team, meets me in the elevator. I barely know him (we have to make sure we know each other) and he says "there is something I've been wanting to give you". Coming from our sales team, I thought it would be a big kick in the rear or something. He whips out his wallet, I'm perplexed. He pulls out a check for $1,000 made out to FAVL and hands it to me. So, I nearly pass out and he tells me: "I heard you speak at our sales kick off in January." This was when I thanked everyone who donated to the Trend Micro Give and Match where we raised ~$600 and my company matched it. He said he had been inspired, and learned more about FAVL and decided he wanted to donate! He was just waiting for his first big commission check to come in. So, I still am about ready to pass out. I thank him profusely!!!!And I echo that. Jim and all the people at Trend Micro, you guys are great, and thanks to you there's a little library in a village in Burkina Faso where kids can come read at night because they have solar power. And by the way, what are kids reading? Emilie, a Peace Corps volunteer who started the library in Pobe, was chatting with me and casually mentioned that young adults in Pobe have been reading Aya hundreds of times... they can't get enough of it.
In the African savannah, a good half-hour drive from the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, Christoph Schlingensief felt at home. It is a place surrounded by green fields, granite cliffs and gnarly baobab trees.
"When I was doing so badly, I told my wife, when things get really tough, we can come here with a suitcase full of pain pills," Schlingensief said in February of his African paradise. "I have the feeling that here I can give myself over to nature, to the motion of this world, without the pressure of the life I led in Berlin."
This was the place Schlingensief had chosen to build what he called an opera village. The village was to include an opera house, but also a school for theater and music, performance spaces and a clinic.
Now, after his death on August 21, Schlingensief's family is doing everything to make sure his vision becomes a reality. In his obituary, they requested that donations be made toward the opera village, instead of flowers or wreaths.
Part of the deal for allowing him to play World of Warcraft and Starcraft was he had to read some Africa-related stuff... this wasn;t the best thing to start with, but it was OK. ]]>
August 28, 2010]]>
Today started early as I promised my kids during the second week I would go to the forest with them on Saturday. Looking back these past two weeks went by faster than I can remember. It also means I have only one more camp to run, as the second camp finished yesterday. In the second camp, I decided to focus on doing sound workshops and completing the research component, as the basics in terms of the schedule and division of labour where already laid upon from the first two weeks. This camp I had 19 kids, 9 girls and 10 boys, although one of them wasn't there for most of the time. This student was unable to fully attend because the salary of one of the fathers got stolen. I have found that each household can contain as many as 50 people as the family extends as to how many wives the father has or sometimes many families come together to from a household. Interesting story from Bernard was that the father gathered the entire household and 'laid' a curse of sickness on the one who stole the money. The meaning of this curse is that the first person to get sick was the one who stole the money. When one child got sick, the father and everyone in that household looked down upon this boy, but the mother blamed Safia, one of the girls attending the camp. Then Safia and the boy had to come by and meet with the father every day to talk things over. I haven't gotten this part straight though and don't know how the problem is going to be resolved but I thought the whole witchery was interesting. I have heard many stories having to do with witches and spells, giving way to a country where 'free will' isn't the norm.
I hadn't seen this article from USF's student newspaper:
The opportunity to travel in Africa and publish a children's book for a small village does not come by very often. For junior Elizabeth Guerra, accomplishing just that was an experience of a lifetime. Guerra traveled to Burkina Faso, a small country in the heart of West Africa that is known to be one of the poorest countries in the world, "with about 80% of its population living in rural villages and earning their livings by working as subsistence farmers," Guerra said. For four months, Guerra traveled with a group of eight other students from September to December 2009 through the Santa Clara University Reading West Africa program.
For the beginning part of her stay, Guerra took classes in the capital city of Ouagadougou, studying economic development, community development, French literature and photography. The official language is actually French, since France colonized the country until Burkina Faso gained its independence in 1960 .
During the other half of her time in Africa, Guerra stayed in the rural village, Sara, in Burkina Faso for a total of 6 weeks. There, she shared a village house with one other student, and together they worked as librarian assistants in the village's library, which was established by Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL) and the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).
Read all....
