Infrastructure Secondary Agricultural School (LAP) and visits to the villages Sissa and Nefrelaye

We will be returning to The Netherlands in the middle of this week. Looking at the development of the spread of the COVID 19, it might be safer to stay in Burkina than going back to Europe….

Visit of the villages of Sissa and Nefrelaye

Women of Sissa

We went to Sissa to meet and discuss with the women. It is always nice to discuss with them even though it is always difficult to get some truths to come out.

The main difficulty for the women is access to water. Even so each of the 5 neighborhoods have a water well, 3 of them do not work. Two have a problem with the handpump itself and one has a problem with the water quality.

Maintenance poorly done, men in charge of collecting the funds for those repairs and keeping some of it for themselves are a big part of the problems.

We will see if we can have them sign a maintenance contract with a good contractor. We did that once in another village. They pay the first year. In this particular year there was no problem with the pump. The village then did not pay the maintenance contract the second year. Why should we pay since there are no costs? The pump broke down at the beginning of this second year and they had to pay much more that the amount of the contract cost.

We went to Nefrelaye to purchase the lemon grass (citronella) the women grow in their gardens. The lemon grass is distilled in Bobo and the essential oil is used in the soap manufactured by our local association.

We passed by the nursery school. They have already 70 children registered (we had only 50 last year). The good work of the school director is really paying off.