A billion people, 3,000 languages, 54 countries, 1 continent: AFRICA

A question I frequently get from my good friends back home: HOW'S AFRICA? This is a frustrating question, which most people don't understand.

But you do live in Africa.

Ah, a good point my friends.  I do live in Africa, but generalizing Africa ignores all of it's complexities.  For example, there are 3 million languages in Africa.  Wrap your head around that. 3 MILLION. In Senegal alone, a country the size of South Dakota, I can think of at least eight languages off the top my head, not including French.

This is a concept that many Africans don't get either.  For one of my programs I needed to have to students draw a map of their villages- they came to class with what was more of an artistic interpretation of what their compounds look like.  Others didn't know what a map was and were too afraid to ask.

Enter PCV Jim Courtright, map enthusiast. Jim designed a project where he would go to a select number of schools to paint a map of Africa.  With the map elementary school teachers would also get a manual with some lesson plans.  Each country's map was included, as well as a basic map reading lessons and some fun facts about geography in Africa (highest mountain, longest river, biggest lake, etc).  To go along with this he also made a map of Senegal.

So Jim and my sitemate Nathan came out to Sanankoro to help paint the map. Let me preface this my saying that Jim made a stencil of Africa with an exacto knife and plastic, in an ingenious system.  There were four stencils, with each one being done in a different color. It took about two hours and looks amazing! Yay Africa!