Saturday afternoon and Sunday of the experience in Burkina Faso with Catholic Relief Services

Hello again,

Happy Easter to everyone.  I was away doing stuff at the parish for Holy Week and had a great time.  Now back to the trip to Burkina Faso with Catholic Relief Services.

After leaving the SILC project we went to see a community garden.  Not just a community garden, as the whole place is a farm during the rainy season.  We went to see an area where CRS had helped put in irrigation for a small patch.  This area was about 8.5 Hectare and included 170 plots given to different families.  Burkina Faso has only about a 3 month rainy period with the rest of the year being dry and inhabitable to crops.  This project allows the Burkinabe to grow a small amount of crops year round.  With this they are able to help themselves, rather than needing handouts during the year. 

One thing that people told us that this irrigation project really helps with is to keep the families together.  Often time when the dry season hits some members of the family have to travel to other parts of the country or other countries to find work to help them get through.  With this project they are able to stay together and be a family.  After seeing the community garden we split into small groups and went to various house areas where people live.  Many times the houses in Burkina Faso are little compound like structures, but they are where everything happens.  Livestock wanders in and out and food is stored in the same area where they have a small spot for sleeping or cooking.  I went with a couple others to the house of Kouka Oumenga.  Kouka is a widow with 8 children.  She works hard and 6 of her children are able to be in school studying, she is unable to afford school for the youngest two at this time.  The area where Kouka lives doesn’t have its own school yet, she has to send her kids away and this is very expensive for them.

We left the community garden and our group split into three to stay at various parishes for the night.  I stayed in the village of Tougouri.  Tougouri is actually 42 small villages with the one main village where the church is.  28 of the villages have Catholics in them, but there are only two priests to serve them all.  They have a great program of Catechists to serve these outlying communities and the priests go around as they can to offer Mass.

Father Samuel, the pastor of the parish was there, the other priest had to go into Kaya for a meeting so we didn’t get to meet him.  Fr. Samuel is a man with a strong, calming presence.  He seems truly concerned for the people around him and gives whatever he can to help them.  He told us a story of spending his own money to drive people to the hospital when he can, a huge sacrifice since he doesn’t get much of a salary and the hospital is a long ways away.

Father Samuel told us that he feels that the social and human development projects that his parish has are a strong part of evangelization.  People have to be fed physically before they can be fed spiritually.  While at his site we were able to see some of these projects.  He runs a center for children that have been rescued from working the gold mines.  The gold mines are dangerous jobs and children work them almost as slave labor.  The center that Fr. Samuel runs helps these children get an education and skills training.  They are trained in sewing, or mechanics, or masonry, or woodworking.  We may balk a little bit at the age that these children are working these jobs, but these are skills that will support them for a lifetime and they would be working in the dangers of the gold mines without this.  The parish also has a warehouse where it distributes food when it can get food in.  They even have their own irrigation project of a sort.

Father Samuel also runs a center to train the catechists to work in the rural villages, this is a long training process and those going through it support themselves by growing crops and doing other jobs as they can. 

I really enjoyed my time in Tougouri.  The people were so welcoming and it was great to be able to walk around and observe some of the normal daily life, rather than the big, planned receptions we had been shown at other places.  On Saturday night we were even able to look in on a wedding reception that was going on.  The wedding receptions aren’t that different than here, they are playing music and dancing and simply celebrating.

On Sunday morning we attended Mass at the church in Tougouri.  The place was packed, and people were sitting outside looking in.  I wouldn’t even attempt to guess how many people there were, but it was well over 500 and maybe over 1000.  There were many great things about Mass.  The first thing that really hit me was the collection taken up.  Rather than passing a basket as is normally done in the States they place baskets at the front for people to come up and put in an offering.  EVERYONE came up and gave something.  I am sure that what they gave caused them to miss a meal or two, but they saw the importance of giving to the community.  I went up near the end and glanced in the basket, it was all small coins except for one bill of 500 xfa (about a dollar).  I put in a 10,000 xfa (20 dollars) and felt like I had given far less since I wouldn’t go hungry because of it.  I felt some sadness when I thought about that and one of the stories that Jesus tells in the Gospel of rich people putting in out the excess and a poor old lady putting in out of her need.

The Mass was incredible with the music and singing too.  They even used liturgical dancers to emphasize the importance at certain parts.  Then we got to the celebration of the Eucharist.  I wondered how that would go and was amazed beyond what I expected.  During the prayer of consecration the people were yelling with joy and then as the priest genuflected they were stone silent in reverence, they truly get the meaning of the Eucharist.

We spent Sunday looking around the village and spending time with Father Samuel.  We then went back to our hotel but I was forever changed for this experience. 

I will write about more experiences on the trip later.

Peace,

Adam