Recently in Africa Category

It's 2003. The Kenyan government has just promised free education for all. Kimani Maruge is thrilled, because now he can finally learn how to read and write. Kimani Maruge limps to the school gates and asks to be admitted to the school. The teachers laugh, and send him away. Why?
Because Maruge is 84 years old.

"The First Grader" is the true story of an old man who wants nothing more than to learn to read and write after never being able to afford school. Despite his being turned away, Maruge continues to show up to the school everyday, finally winning over headmaster Jane Obinchu.

In between his present battle of fighting for his right to an education against the parents and administrators determined to kick Maruge out of the school, we learn about Maruge's horrific past as a Mau Mau veteran, a man who fiercely battled for the independence of his country. He witnessed his entire family murdered before his eyes. He was held in detention camps for years and brutally tortured (beat, whipped, toes chopped off, sharp pencils jammed inside his ears).

So very true...

Some of my favorite times in Burkina are during major soccer tournaments. My first experience with this was during the Africa Cup of Nations in 2010. I've never seen a group of people get so excited about any sporting event, and this includes each of the four consecutive years that the Buffalo Bills went to the Super Bowl in the glory days of Jim Kelly (I'm from upstate New York, where you love the Bills through the good times and the bad). My colleagues spent entire days glued in front of the television, watching match after match, like the fate of the world depended on them watching each match.

Well, the Africa Cup of Nations is back! (See my previous blog about President Blaise Compaoré's words of encouragement before the Etalons left for the tournament.) Sunday evening, the night of Burkina's first match, my neighborhood transformed. Up and down the street, giant flags of Burkina were blowing in the wind. Televisions suddenly appeared at every restaurant, food kiosk and street corner, with people crowded around. People were on a high because Côte d'Ivoire had just defeated Sudan.

Then the game started! Burkina was up against Angola. Throughout out the game, you could hear cheers and geers everywhere. When Burkina scored it's first goal early in the second half, I swear you could hear the whole city cheering. Unfortunately, it was downhill from there. Admittedly, the Burkinabè played quite badly. And in the last ten minutes or so, the Angolans did not want to take any chances giving up their one-point lead, and a few players tried to run out the clock by faking fatigue and injuries. At one point, I swear the Angolan goalie literally just laid down on the field. The Etalons did end up losing. It was a very disappointing game.

On the bright side, the first round is not over yet, so we still have a chance to make a comeback! We play again on Thursday against Côte d'Ivoire. And tonight, in a match I'm excited to watch, Mali is up against Guinea. I'm rooting for our neighbors to the north!


  

I recently acquired a television here in Ouaga. Besides catching up with my favorite game show, "Des Mots et Des Maths", and the fantastically horrible Latin American soap operas that are translated into French, I've been enjoying regular installments in a series of short films by ONASER (l'Office National de la Securité Routière). The series is being aired in installments each evening on RTB (Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina). Each of the specials (that you always get tricked into watching because you think it's a movie - very clever, ONASER!) features someone going normally about their daily routine, leaving their house either by moto or car. Unbeknownst to them, there is a menace on the road, vehemently breaking one of the well-established rules of the road (so far I've seen chatting while you're motoing alongside someone, talking on a cell phone, smoking and speeding). Eventually, a collision happens, and either one or both of the parties is gravely injured. Some of them are a bit gruesome, but I think it helps the message really hit home.

What I really like about this series is that all of the situations are incredibly realistic. Most educational videos make you feel like the situations are purposefully exaggerated to prove their point, and therefore, the consequences could never actually happen to someone in real life. However, this is not the case with the ONASER videos. Because people are just that ridiculous on the roads, and accidents like the ones dramatized happen everyday in Ouagadougou (as well as other urban centers). I personally feel like I'm playing a game of Russian Roulette with my life everytime I move outside of a half-a-block radius from my house. It's every man for himself out there and can be quite terrifying! And not only does everyone "roulent mal" as we say here in Burkina (a phrase that roughly translates to "drive badly"), very few people where helmets, so even minor accidents often become more serious. 

In an article on allAfrica.com in December, the Director of Road Safety, Hubert Poda, explained why he thought the short film series is important:

L'année 2011 est en passe de devenir l'année la plus meurtrière du fait de la fréquence des accidents graves que l'on enregistre chaque mois. Pour réduire le nombre des victimes de ces accidents, il nous a paru indispensable de changer les mentalités des usagers de la route, voire de la population entière à travers ces actions de sensibilisation de masse et de contrôle afin d'adopter des comportements responsables.

(The year 2011 has become the deadliest year [in Burkina Faso] due to the frequency of serious accidents that we've seen each month. To reduce the number of victims of these accidents, it has become necessary for us to change the mentality of the people who use the road, to reach the entire population as a whole through these informational videos and to encourage them to behave responsibly.)

Shorts on RTB seem like the perfect medium to reach the population. RTB is a station that you get on your television even without an antenna. It is watched on a regular basis by a large portion of the urban population, where most of these deadly accidents occur. Even when people don't have personal access to televisions, they watch at neighbor's houses, restaurants and bars. Not to mention, the Burkinabè love a good drama. If it encourages just a few more people out there to actually look at the road and pay attention while they are zooming down the road, it will have served its purpose. I may even have to be totally Peace Corps about this and invite the people of my neighborhood over to watch it one evening, so I can stop biking in fear for my life!

Burkina's national soccer team is gearing up to African Cup of Nations (CAN) 2012, which will be held in both Equitorial Guinea and Gabon. The best performance of the Etalons was at the CAN in 1998, where they placed fourth. They will play their first match versus Angola on 22 January. On Monday, President Blaise Compaoré gave a pep talk to the team and pumped up the nation for the CAN season. The president applauded the team's courage and intelligence, and asked them to demonstrate concentration and determination during the tournament. Here's a little snippet from the article on lefaso.net:

Blaise COMPAORE a tenu à féliciter le Onze national et l'encadrement, pour leur qualification en phase finale, à les encourager et leur prodiguer des conseils en vue d'une bonne prestation lors de la compétition.

Le Président COMPAORE a insisté sur l'expérience, la maturité, l'engagement personnel, l'esprit collectif, le courage et l'intelligence qui doivent guider les Etalons : « Nous vous faisons confiance car à travers votre parcours, vous avez eu de l'expérience, de la maturité et des résultats, vous avez la capacité de sortir du lot », a notamment déclaré le Chef de l'Etat burkinabè.

Les Etalons ont été également appelés à la vigilance, à la concentration et à la détermination dans cette CAN où toutes les équipes ont un niveau bon et équivalent.

Good luck Etalons!

I thought this article on lefaso.net was interesting, especially since it concerned the area around which a great number of FAVL Burkina's libraries are located.Here's a little snippet, talking about what a rough year Burkina has had socially and the added concern of a subpar crop of cotton this year.

L'année 2011 qui s'achèvera dans quelques jours, a été très éprouvante pour les Burkinabè. Le pays a été secoué par une crise sociale sans précédent, marquée par de nombreuses manifestations de scolaires et des mutineries de militaires dans la quasi-totalité des casernes. Comme si cela ne suffisait pas, la situation alimentaire est devenue très préoccupante, parce que la campagne agricole n'a pas produit les résultats escomptés. Le coton, encore appelé «  l'or blanc  », a lui aussi connu sa traversée du désert. Aux mois de juin et juillet, de nombreux producteurs, insatisfaits des prix proposés pour l'acquisition des intrants et la vente du kilogramme de coton, ont violemment exprimé leur mécontentement, en détruisant les plants de coton de ceux qui ont osé braver le mot d'ordre de boycott de la campagne.

La crise dans les zones de production de la Société burkinabè des fibres et textiles (SOFITEX) a même tourné au drame dans la région cotonnière de Houndé, où des cotonculteurs se sont affrontés. Résultat, un producteur a été tué dans la zone de Boromo et plusieurs autres arrêtés et jetés en prison. La culture du coton est pourtant très soutenue par les autorités du Burkina Faso. Chaque année, ce sont des centaines de millions de F CFA de subvention qui sont injectés dans ce secteur, pour amoindrir les coûts de production. Mais cela, semble-t-il, est insuffisant, car les cotonculteurs continuent de se plaindre des prix des intrants et du kilogramme de coton graine. Les engrais, vendus durant cette campagne entre 16 000 et 18 000 F CFA le sac de 100 kg, ont été jugés trop chers.

And more about the importance of cotton to women in the southwest region of Burkina Faso.

Grâce à la vente de leurs récoltes, des milliers de cotonculteurs ont amélioré leurs conditions de vie : construction de maisons en dur, achat de tracteurs, de motos, entre autres. Dans une ville comme Bobo-Dioulasso, de petites unités industrielles (huileries, savonneries, fabriques de tourteaux) ont vu le jour, toujours grâce au coton, et emploient des centaines de jeunes. N'eût été le coton, de nombreuses femmes n'auraient pas également de quoi s'occuper à Sya. En effet, ces femmes arrivent à raffiner l'huile brute qu'elles achètent aux unités modernes, et aussi à produire du savon. Même si elles mènent leurs activités dans la clandestinité, la vente des produits leur permet de soutenir financièrement leurs époux. On le constate donc, le coton est vital pour notre pays. Des pays de la sous-région ont été particulièrement généreux avec leurs cotonculteurs en 2011, l'objectif étant de relancer le secteur de l'or blanc.

I popped in the 2005 film "The Constant Gardener" into the DVD player, not really expecting much. By the end of the movie I was still not impressed, but I can't deny that the film left me thinking about, as one reviewer put it, "...how the world leaves Africa behind."

Justin (Ralph Fiennes) is a calm and reticent diplomat in Kenya. His wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz) is a feisty, passionate activist. Rumors run rampant, and Justin believes that his wife is having an affair with her Kenyan colleague. But when Tessa is brutally murdered, Justin discovers the real motive behind her death. She was working to uncover a global conspiracy: the illegal, unethical testing (with lethal side effects) that pharmaceutical companies were doing on innocent, unknowing Kenyans, and the organizations, governments and individuals that helped them do it. It is said that the film is based on true events that occurred in Nigeria in the mid 90s. Maybe so, but I would not be surprised to learn that this sort of thing had/has been going on for years in numerous other underdeveloped African countries.

To be frank, "The Constant Gardner" is just too Hollywood for me. If true, this conspiracy is absolutely horrific and deplorable. I wanted to know more; I wanted to know the truth. Unfortunately, all the Hollywood explosions and high speed chases sort of ruined it all for me. I also found it strange and ironic that, in a film that portrays how the "rich, white" world abused Kenyans, that not a single one of the film's protagonist was an African. I think that if this story were made into an investigative documentary, it would have been a much more interesting and powerful film (though unfortunately probably wouldn't have made a dime).

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't cry in the film. There were a couple really heartbreaking scenes. In one, Justin has just arrived on a plane dropping off food and supplies to a refugee camp. Soon after, the camp is attacked by rebels. The violent scene that follows includes rebels heartlessly shooting anyone that gets in their way, women being raped in front of their families, children running and screaming while the rebels chase and capture them to become child soldiers. In another scene, still during the rebel attack, all the white aid workers are whisked away on a plane. When one tries to bring a young Kenyan girl with him on the plane, a girl who has been by the aid worker's side since day one, the pilot refuses. The man and the pilot argue back and forth over the girl. Quickly and quietly, the girl simply jumps off the plane with this sad look on her face, as if saying "I know my place. I know I'm not wanted in your world." Within two minutes the aid worker apologizes for the scene he caused and forgets about the girl.

My appreciation of these two scenes had nothing to do with the film's direction or cinematography. Instead I considered these scenes, a daily occurrence in Africa, as a reminder of how damn fortunate and lucky I am. I easily could have been like the girl in the above scene, a child whose only misfortunate was to be born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the "wrong" skin color. Especially during the ridiculous hustle and bustle of the holiday season, the hundreds of dollars spent on frivolous gifts, it's nice to be reminded to simply appreciate life.  

This article in The Economist is cool for several reasons, one of which being that it features Marie Stopes International in Ouagadougou, the host organization of a fellow third year Peace Corps volunteer. The clinic recently performed the first-ever vasectomy in Burkina Faso. The article explores the relationship between fertility rates and economic prosperity, the argument being that if countries in Africa can dramatically reduce their fertility rates, they will receive an economic boost as their population ages. The author explores the various reasons that the fertility rates in African countries have been slow to fall, even as access to contraception increases. One of the important points, which is very relevant to our work here at FAVL, was the following :

Last, female education in Africa, like contraceptive use, has lagged behind the rest of the world, and there is a close connection between educating girls and having fewer children.

Access to education has so much impact on the development of a country. And education not only includes formal schooling, but also access to books and other learning materials at libraries.

Read the rest of the article here.

People never cease to surprise me. Just when you think you have things figured out, and you can predict word for word the interactions you're going to have with random strangers on the street, they do the complete opposite. I was very pleasantly surprised today when I was out getting lunch, when a group of kids around the age of ten approached me. Usually these interactions involve demands for money, candy or photos. But today these small children ran up to me from the soccer field across the street, cheering and looking quite dusty. They said "Madame, we just wanted to show you this cup that we just won from a soccer tournament." I looked around and noticed that they were all wearing matching red t-shirts, and one kid was holding a wooden cup with a gold star on it. The score was 4 to 0. I gave them my congratulations, and they all got high fives. These little guys were all quite proud of themselves. It definitely made my day.

One of the things I hadn't done until yesterday was really explore the wildlife of Burkina Faso. While there are no lions or giraffes or many animals that one thinks of when one thinks of Africa, Burkina is home to elephants, camels, and crocodiles. There are parks that you can go to all over the country to see these animals. A friend of mine is teaching at a high school that is only 25 km from Ouaga and is not far from Bazoulé, home of some of Burkina's sacred crocodiles. He saw the RWA book about Bazoulé, and decided that since he was not far from there that we needed to check out "Pierre" and his friends.

We decided to take advantage of the long weekend (December 11 was one of Burkina's independence day holidays) and trekked out with a couple of our friends to the "Mare aux Crocodiles à Bazoulé." We went early in the morning, which turned out to be a good idea because as we were leaving the place started to get really crowded. Upon arrival, you pay your admission and buy a chicken (to lure the crocodiles out of the lake). A guide took led us around the water, leading us to the different places where we could see crocodiles. Most of the tour is concentrated around a large body of water. Ther are also a few other pools where the crocs hang out. The guide told us that the crocodiles move between bodies of water by crossing the street and that local kids even bathe in the water with the animals! He said that no one has ever even been bitten by one of them! At one point we saw a group of sheep grazing by the water's side, with crocodiles nearby, taking no notice at all!

Our first stop was a crocodile who was all alone by a small pool. We all crouched over him and lifted up his tail. He was so docile that it almost seemed as though he was dead. We poked at him, at the encouragement of our guide, but he didn't even flinch. After this, we moved on to a spot where several crocodiles had already come out of the water. We each took turned lifting up one of the crocodile's tails, as the guides beat back with a stick the crocodiles that were trying to come up out of the water. I was so scared to go down, and then as I approached the beached crocodile, one came up out of the water suddenly with his mouth open! Much to the amusement of the crowd around the water, I ran away screaming. We saw the oldest crocodile in the park, and the guide said he was 70 years old. We saw little babies, but they were too fast for us to get pictures of. As we were leaving, we were able to go in and take pictures with the tortoises, the oldest of whom was 90 years old and didn't really look like he got around much anymore. The very last stop was a restaurant, with ridiculously overpriced food, which we decided to skip in lieu of eating on the cheap at home. It was a really fun trip (although the place was a bit touristy for my taste), and it's always fun to discover new corners of Burkina.