This is the second week of our trip to Burkina. Day temperatures are around 34°C, but at night it comes down to 21/22°C . Kinda nice.
When going to the LAP in the morning, after about 10km, there are always women waiting on the side of the road. They are picked up by tricycles and taken to work in the fields. They will get 1,5 euro for working between 8 AM to 3 PM!! Most of those women are displaced people.
Meeting in Bobo with villagers
APPA is working in 12 villages and it is difficult to visit them all during our stay in Burkina, even if the security is OK.
So we have invited two persons per village (one man and one woman) to come to our office in Bobo. We wanted to know how the new organisation of the township works and to talk about past and future projects.
The meeting was for 8 AM, but we knew that we would not start before 9. We decided that we would close the door for village delegations who came after 10:00. One village delegation showed at 10:05 and another one at 10:45. We did not let them in and its was a bit of a shock for them. One person attending the meeting said that this is what they now do in the villages as well.
Before the taken over by Ibrahim Traoré the new president of Burkina, each village had 2 “conseillers” who where elected and had to belong to a political party. Another part of the village organisation was the Village Development Committee (CVD) and the traditional chief.
Now the” conseillers” are gone and the organisation of the village goes around the CVD. Also working groups in the village have been created by type of activity: education, health, infrastructure,…
All the participants are very positive about the new organisation and specially that the politic is out of the villages. There is much more cohesion between them and they participate without difficulty to joint works in the village.
Since the CVD has taken a bigger role it is important that the president of this organisation is a good person. In the discussion with the villagers who have come to Bobo at least 2 villages seem to have a weak leader as the CVD president.
The projects we have realised which they feel gave the stronger impact were the construction of primary- and nursery school, of the medical centre and the “Maison de la Femme”. Ffinally the realisation of water wells.
Regarding the project they whish we could help them with for all the villages is the increase of beehives. Villages who do not have a nursery school or a medical centre also wish to have one.
Eugénie at work
Last week Eugénie came to the LAP and spent time with the girls. Even so many girls did not know her, it was a warm encounter with the 150 girls at lunch time.
This week she went to Nefrelaye with Odile to talk about menstruation to the girls of the last 3 classes of primary school (girls between 10 and 14 years old). The number of students is small due the fact that the villagers had to flee the village in 2023.
This is part of a project of the Rotary Club Utrecht International together with the Dutch association Wilde Ganzen.
Communication with the girls was not easy. They have very little notion about biology and menstruation is taboo in a Muslim village.
Besides the awareness meeting and distribution of washable protection kits in 5 villages, 3 tiled latrines for the girls are also being built.
Visit of the Dutch Ambassador
The new Dutch Ambassador came to Bobo and we had dinner with him and other Dutch people on Saturday night. He came to better understand the country. On Sunday he will go visit a small hospital being built in the village of Léna (partially funded by Dutch funds) and he has visited the LAP.
The LAP is becoming a reference for an appropriate and quality education in Burkina even so we do not make much advertisement.
Sayings of the week
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader”. – John Quincy Adams
“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it”. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
Take care of yourselves,
Hervé