School and such

School has finally officially started in Mali, after a little bit of a rough start with the teachers being on strike...again. Luckily though, they've been going to school now for the past three weeks without interuption, so hopefully this means the teachers have worked out most of their issues and will keep on teaching! I've started working at a couple of the schools in Djenne teaching basic health topics to 6th graders, a series of reproductive health classes to ninth graders with another volunteer, and just recently I did an art project with a fourth grade class my friend teaches. We had the students each draw a picture of something that they think represents their lives in Djenne. I supplied the paper and crayons (not every child is required to show up with crayons on the first day of school like in the States!) and they went to work. It was definitely very interesting to see the ideas they came up with. I had to really stress that everyone not make a drawing of the same thing, and some students did get creative, but I also have lots of pictures of the Mali flag or drawings copied from their book. Creativity is just not valued as much here as it is back home, but hopefully this gave them at least one opportunity to do something fun and artsy! I will be mailing the pictures in to OneWorld Classrooms who will then send us back a bunch of drawings done by students from all over the world! I'm excited to see what kind of pictures we'll get, and we're thinking of doing a mural of a world map so that when we get the drawings we can locate the countries (and also clarify that you cannot, in fact, drive in the bashe to get to America!).
Other than that, life in Djenne had been good, Sally is still hanging around (although she seems to have scared her only remaining child away) and it's finally starting to cool off a bit!