Recently in Understanding Africa Category

FAVL volunteer and Santa Clara Univesity graduate ('10) Brianna Osetinsky on her second day in Sumbrungu...

The other day, shortly after my arrival to Sumbrungu, I was invited by Lucas, the library coordinator, to a funeral in his family's home.

After greeting many of Lucas's family members, we settled onto a large tire under some much appreciated shade, and Lucas explained some of the funeral traditions. Gesturing to the goat tied up next to him, Lucas explained that people bring offerings of money or animals. The animals are slaughtered over the course of the funeral celebration, often playing the dual role of sacrifice and food for the numerous guests. I had to chuckle to myself at the parallels to the overwhelming amounts of cold cut and cheese platters that people had brought to funerals I had attended in the US. It really only takes about two meals of baloney before you start to wonder where you can get a little goat.

This particular funeral was on its fourth day, and we were going to see a "sending off" ceremony of sorts, where friends and family give things to the deceased to tell her "we will not forget about you" because the final funeral closing rights were not going to be for another year.

As Lucas was explaining the finer points of the traditions, a large group of women came around the outside of the house chanting a song and moving and clapping in time while a shaker drove the beat. We followed them into the courtyard, where they began to dance and sing. The women were of all ages, and many were very old. However, they were some of the most exuberant dancers, leading the songs and jumping into the middle of the group to jump and stamp their feet when the tempo of the clapping rose to a frenzied pitch.

After a while, the group began to gather close around a wall, still singing and dancing, but now with a definite focus. Lucas and I climbed onto one of the flat roofs to get a better view. The group was gathered around a large clay pot, and the women who were closest with the deceased were kneeling around it holding onto the brim with both hands. The women around the pot would get up and sing in intervals, sometimes with the others, sometimes an individual dance, often ending with a long high yell that they directed right into the mouth of the pot. One of the women began quietly crying, reminding me that this celebration was for a funeral, but she was led away because this was not a time for crying. After all the women who wanted to dedicated something to the pot, the women carried it as a group into a small opening in one of the buildings, where it will be saved until the final funeral rites. Then more general singing and dancing resumed, including an appearance by two men complete with bows and a huge quiver of arrows, the traditional wear for the war dance.

We were there for most of the afternoon, and as dusk set in and bugs started to bite, Lucas suggested we head home. We climbed down, but before we could leave, I got pulled into dancing. Full disclosure, it takes almost nothing to pull me into dancing, I will dance at any opportunity, and with the beat that had been going on all afternoon, it had been more a matter of self control, and not wanting to overstep boundaries that had kept me from jumping in long before. That being said, I still don't have a ton what could rightly be termed "rhythm" when I dance, but it didn't seem to matter much. Pretty soon I was jumping and stamping my feet with an old woman as the others clapped a beat for us. After laughing a while with everyone, I thanked them for having me and we headed back to the Women's Center in Sumbrungu, with a grin glued to my face after such a pleasant day.

From an op-ed by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

Nigerians, particularly in the heavily Muslim north, live in fear of violence from the Islamist group Boko Haram. More than a hundred people have been shot to death or killed in bombings in recent weeks. My uncle, who lived most of his adult life in the northern town of Maiduguri, recently moved back east after a Boko Haram bomb exploded mere feet from his bookshop. Now he is struggling to start over, a man past middle age, grasping for hope. I saw him on New Year's Day. He said he had only barely been able to afford the rent for a new shop in Awka, our state capital, and now he had to deal with the new price of petrol -- he will have to spend much more on transportation and, since there is hardly ever any electricity, on the generator to power his shop. "How will I cope?" he asked.

I'm no economist, but this seems like a poor implementation of policy.  Wait, I am an economist!  Hmmm... gotta say something intelligent I guess.  So while economists in general are against subsidizing polluting consumer items, Africa-specialists realize that public transparent subsidies like a gasoline subsidy are the only way the public can keep a small "rein" on corruption by public officials... they have to give something back to the public.  They cannot steal everything from the public coffers.  So the anger at the removal is palpable... the reaction is not, "Good, now the fiscal house will be in order" but rather an incredulous, "You want to steal even more from us?"  So the right policy was to have pulled a switch, and announced that fule subsidies would be removed and solar panel subsidies would be implemented.  Free solar panel and storage battery and wiring kit for $10.  Or solar lanterns for $1 from d.light.  Jeesh, why aren't I running Nigeria?  Would be so easy.

Kyle Baker's graphic novel Nat Turner, tells the very powerful story of slavery and rebellion with "pull no punches" images, and few words (except a lot of extracts from the Confessions of Nat Turner).  The graphic novel is bracketed by two images of readers in the dark, literally and figuratively, that summarize the whole tragedy and crime of slavery.  This really should be required reading in high school. I have a feeling most school principals would be terrified, however, of the imagery.... axing a baby to death in the rebellion, a mother throwing her child overboard as the slave ship disembarks in America... Nat Turner swaying as he is hanged.

A commentator on Amazon gives the book a 1, with the following comment (among others): "Some things shouldn't be remembered at all because they just bring back bad blood. Nat Turner should not be remembered. If you want to know more about him, read one of the many scholarly histories on university websites. This book is nothing but gore porn."  I think this is indeed a complex point, and was raised in discussions of Spielberg's Schindlers List.  If you already know your answer to this kind of question, you know whether you ought to read Nat Turner.  If not, think about the question before reading.

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!

Over the last couple of weeks I have been skimming G. Ugo Nwokeji's study (The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra: An African Society in the Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) of the slave trade in Biafra that "fed" the Atlantic slave trade.  Nwokeji concentrates on showing how the nascent trade transformed the Aro merchant group into a region-wide network that expanded and influenced social culture and organization throughout the region.  A nice focus on how an African region was transformed socially by the slave trade, not focusing on the negatives for those captured, but rather on the processes of the capturing and selling.  Good reading if you are interested in the topic, and I was pleasantly surprised to find at the end a discussion of Olaudah Equiano's autobiographical narrative of enslavement to abolitionist.  I had found that two weeks ago at a thrift store, and browsed it all weekend... fascinating stuff.  And the most interesting is how widely his narrative was read (he became fairly wealthy from the sales, apparently).

Last night the kids sat down to watch Edward Scissorshands, so I got to read (sorry Johnny Depp but I just didn't enjoy it when I saw it years ago, even if you do love France). As I browsed about for something good, I found an academic article about an obscure revolt in the Kipirsi region led by Alassane Moumini in colonial Upper Volta in 1908.  Perfect! 

The author, Assimi Kouanda, does a creditable job of re-interpreting an admittedly small ("only" about 2,000 people were killed) episode in the French consolidation of power.  The oral traditions are scant, and the archival record heavily slanted by the White Father's interpretation of events (they saw themselves as the winner against rising "marabout"-inspired anti-French and anti-White Fathers tendencies.  Once the revolt was crushed, several chiefs were replaced with relatives more favorable to the White Fathers.  Early on the importance of the White Fathers is clear; they outlasted most of the administrators, understood much more of local languages and hierarchies, and could easily tap into a large network of local converts who were loyal to the Church.  So they "interpreted" the revolt for administrators, and acted as a kind of shadow intelligence service.

The reason I wanted to read it?  Dim Delobsom (about whom I am writing a graphic novel) was the son the Sao naba, a Mossi chief near Kipirsi.  Sao regularly fought the Kipirsi, apparently.  The historical record is really unclear, though, about what people in 1900-1930 meant when they referred to Kipirsi.  It was a region west of Ouagadougou (and Boussé), but there didn't seem to be any people who identified themselves as Kirpirsi....One of those little mysteries time travel could resolve...

Last night I had the pleasure of reading Abina and the Important Men, a graphic novel by Trevor Getz, a history professor up at SF Stat, and illustrated by Liz Clarke.  I was very impressed!  It is a compelling story, and the book would be extremely useful in high school and university courses, with all kinds of pedagogy guides, short essays, and suggestions for discussion and further reading.

In addition to being a pleasure to read, the book raises three interesting and fundamental questions:

1. How should a historian (professional and amateur) "read" the surviving historical record, when we can reasonably assume it has been biased - many "voices" of the past never make it into the historical record.
2. The ambivalence of the British in enforcing their anti-slavery ordinances, in light of their interest in stability and own role in fostering the slave trade to begin with, provides a context for addressing enduring ethical dilemmas about compromises, responsibility, and justifications.  Likewise for the ambivalence of the "important men" of colonial indigenous societies.
3. How was slavery different in Africa compared with New World slavery?  What kinds of generalizations might be appropriate to make?  And then of course, this issue prompts us to think about the enduring effects of slavery.  How has the collective experience of 300 years of slavery trade left traces in social institutions of present-day African societies.

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.

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.