Accounting!

I had my second to last course today and subject was a fun one... accounting! First I have to confess I've never actually taken an accounting course in my life (why would I have, I was an econ major which is all theory, not business) but I have all of Peace Corps "how to teach basic accounting" materials and the level of accounting that I'm teaching isn't hard to pick up. The accounting is really just writing money that comes in and money that leaves - simple enough but not practiced here.

Class started like normal, I reviewed last week's lesson and then asked why this week's subject (accounting) is important. After a few guesses we started in on the actual work. The format is simple enough, 8 columns to track incoming and outgoing money. I gave two examples for a fake tailor shop and then asked for volunteers to enter other activities (bought fabric, sold a dress, etc). After a few, I took the next volunteer and told him, "you just bought tea for you and your friends to drink." He started to right the date, name of activity, and money spent when I stopped him, "I'm not nice. I played a trick on you.. sit down and I'll explain." I proceeded to explain that if the tea is for you and your friends to drink that isn't a business expense! And all of the kids seemed to understand and we finished the examples. I then gave them a little speech about how we only have one class left but if they want to learn more we can do that in smaller groups or if they have businesses in their family I would love to help out. Then everyone did their group work and we all left.

I had two girls walk home with me because they had missed part of last week's class and wanted to go over what they missed. After that was done one of them asked me what I did after class and I answered honestly, "nothing." (to be fair, class ends at 5pm and I do most of my other work in the morning) She invited me over to her house but I told her I needed to wait for other students to come if they were going to come to my "office hours." About 20 minutes later she came back and said, "well if you can't leave, I'll sit with you," and we ended up chatting about her life and mine for about 45 minutes until another student showed up with a question. He ended up staying a little later too and the 3 of us talked.

I'll be a little sad when my class ends Saturday because it's my current big project. Tomorrow I'm supposed to hear the final answer from the University of Bambey so maybe the camp will take the place of the class. I'm also working on a few projects with the students during the summer - I know I complained about nothing to do during the summer but these kids have literally nothing to do if they're staying in Bambey.

Back to the University tomorrow, I'm sure I'll have some story of bureaucracy tomorrow!

KO