More than 400mm of rain since the biginning of the month of september. It is a big part of the rains this year which are at 1.100 mm.
A lot of humidity in the air and a lot of dew in the early morning as you can see on the pictures of the grass.
Political situation
After one week of uncertainty things seem to come back to normality. The transition government is back in place and some strong decisions have been put in place immediately: disarmament and dissolution of the presidential guards, some political parties have been forbidden and the assets of their leaders frozen. It seems that those political parties where together with the people who made the coup d’état. They have found mails and written statements which show that they were already negotiating who would have which ministry!!!! The leader of the coup apologized saying that he regrets to have made the coup.
Burkinabe have a new verb in their vocabulary: dienderer (from the name of the coup leader Diendere). It means you do something bad, you apologize and you think that you are forgotten.
The elections will be postponed, but the new elected president will not have to take care of the presidential guard problem.
During this week, banks, shops, gasoline stations where closed. Gasoline stations were opened from 4 to 7 in the morning in the last days of the coup. I went to get some gasoline at 5 in the morning and there were queues of about 100 motorbikes at each station I tried. From Wednesday 16 to Monday 21, I stayed at home, then I was spending some time in the office. I had enough food to go through this period.
In any case congratulations to the people of Burkina, they really mobilized themselves against the people who made the coup d’état.
The regular army has taken control of the roads and a lot of checks are done looking for arms and some of the presidential guards who are trying to flee.
News from the LAP
There was some shortage of food at the LAP for the 230 students we have there. I went there on Wednesday with rice, pasta and bread.
Thursday was the feast of the sheep (Tabaski) and the Muslim students would have preferred to be at home. The Muslim children get new clothes and they eat the whole day. We did something a bit different by buying some goats for this occasion.
The 230 children at the LAP
Because of the political situation, teachers could not make it to the LAP on the planned day. The rains also created some problem. Some children could not get out of their villages. Monday 28th September everybody should be at their place.
Other activities
With the rains and the instability of the country we did not do a lot with the villages. We have prepared the start of the school for the students with scholarship in Banfora and for a new group going to the school of Bingo.
The logistics for all those students are not easy. They are in their villages, we have to gather them in Bobo before sending them to Banfora or Bingo. Due to the unrest, starting date of the schools changes all the time. We are very pleased that some villagers have a mobile phone.
Next week will also be the start of the 5 nursery schools we support.
How to make a booklet from photocopy?
When we duplicate books or reports we have fancy photocopy machines, which will sort the pages and staple them. While I was looking for school books for the LAP I came to Faso Livres which is dedicated to copy of old exams which are gathered in books called annals.
I saw a group of about 15 people turning round a large table. Each of the person had a box in his hands and while turning he was taking sheets of paper from the table. Each of the person was making a booklet.
Quiz
From which crop is this flower?
Seen along an early walk at the LAP
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Yellow bird
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What is my best profile?
Sayings of the week
« La politique, ce n’est pas compliqué, il suffit juste d’avoir une bonne conscience, et pour cela, il faut juste avoir une mauvaise mémoire. » Coluche
“Politics is not complicated, you just have to have a good conscience, and for that, you just have to have a bad memory. “ Coluche
« La politique est supposé être la seconde plus ancienne profession. J’ai réalisé qu’elle ressemble beaucoup à la première. » Ronald Reagan
“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I realized that it looks much like the first.” Ronald Reagan
Hope the coming week will be more stable in Burkina. Eugenie will join me next Sunday.
Have an excellent week.
Hervé