I've been teaching in the Burkina Faso school system now for three weeks.  The three schools that I teach in are private.  I don't really think that means much more than they cost more to go to.  One of my classes has 62 students in it while the other two each have about 20.
Some of my students do quite well in class and actually appear to belong there.  The others are incredibly far behind and to be honest I don't have a clue how to catch them up.  I see each of my classes for three hours a week one day during the week.
The large gap in ability is thanks to the system these students are coming up in.  You can completely fail English every year and as long as your other subject scores are good then you move up in level. That means you move up in every level, including the subjects that you fail.
Spent the weekend up in the North again . . . The landscape is changing rapidly.  Sometime this "winter" I'll get back up there so you can see what the dry season really looks like.  Also had to ride the bus back after sundown -- slightly un-nerving.  Not nearly as bad as my trip up which consisted of a driver who was much more in love with the horn than the breaks.
He was a big fan of laying on the horn from about a mile away from his target.  Once we were roughly 10 feet from whatever it was we were passing (mostly donkeys) he would rapidly turn then immediately over correct at about 50 mph in a Greyhound-size bus.  Good times, especially on unpaved bridges with 30 or so foot drops to either side.
Ben Roberts
Teacher, English Language Institute, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso