Hello again,
As the quarter (and the school year) winds down I have a bit
of time to post more about the wonderful experience I had with Catholic Relief
Services in Burkina Faso. Since I have
noticed a bit of new activity on here I will step back a moment for those who
haven’t been reading about this trip since I started posting on it. This experience that I had was with the
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program called Globalfellows. Globalfellows is a program where CRS takes
priests, deacons, and seminarians to witness their great works in action. They do this so that these men can come back
to the United States to tell about what they saw and the great work that CRS is
doing, hopefully educating people to the need and the ability to help through
supporting CRS. They say that this is
more of a “come and see” than a “come and do” so that we can have a better
overall knowledge of the programs in a specific place to be able to share. We had Mass every day but I don’t include a
lot of details about that or our prayer time since it was often just our group
participating, we had three priests along, plus myself and 5 other seminarians
in addition to two staff members from CRS in the US.
My last post of the trip concluded Sunday and our experience
at the local parish. Sunday night we
were back in the Pacific Hotel in Kaya.
Our first project to visit was a food distribution site and
nutrition program. This is a program
that CRS administers, but much of the food and I think much of the funding
comes from USAID (United States Agency
for International Development) an international aid program of the US
government. USAID relies on other aid
groups to do much of the on the ground work for the good work that it does, in
Burkina Faso and many other places CRS is the main organization that they work
with. This allows CRS to do farm more
than it would be able to on its own, but also includes some restrictions on
what they do.
This food distribution site was in a place called Taparko by
the best that I could figure out. It is
one of the many villages over a great deal of area that makes up what is often
referred to as Tougouri, the main village where the parish I had stayed at for
the weekend was. One of the restrictions
that USAID has with the food distribution program in Taparko is that it has to
focus on pregnant women and mothers who are still nursing their babies. There simply isn’t enough food to distribute
to all so they do the best that they can.
Each woman that qualifies gets a ration according to how they
qualify. If they are pregnant or nursing
they are given 6 kg of a corn soy blend flour type mix, they are also given
0.65 liters of oil to use in cooking. If
they qualify for this and have small children they are given a little bit more
of each of these and 2 kg of lentils. All for the month. (The numbers I say are the
best I could figure out, I was a bit confused as we were being told as to what
exactly was being talked about)
This site also helps teach women skills to raise their
children in a healthier manor. One of
the biggest issues is that they don’t normally breast feed children in the
culture. I don’t know the reasoning
behind this, but it isn’t done. They
switch the babies to solid food or mixes far sooner than is good for them. This program is a way to encourage
breastfeeding to at least six months old to give the child a healthier
start. There is also access to a nurse
and some medical attention that is provided at the nutrition site since most of
the people in these areas don’t get medical care often.
We had some time to talk to people who were receiving food
in addition to helping with the distribution (I say helping, but we were far
slower than those who normally do the distribution). I spoke with one woman named Sonde who had 3
children but one had died. Sonde was
pregnant again and was very thankful both for the food and the education which
would help her to provide a better chance for her coming child. As with most of the women, Sonde said that
the ration given under the restrictions wouldn’t last the whole month, not just
for her but she used it to help provide for her whole family. She appreciated the food because even though
it didn’t last the whole time (she said about 5-7 days was all she got out of
it) it did help her family to stretch out what they could get on their own and
had additional nutrition compared to that food.
After we went away from Taparko we went to see a BRIGHT
school. I don’t remember right now what
that acronym stands for, and I don’t have my materials around to look it up. BRIGHT schools are built in two phases and
include both classrooms and places for teachers to live. The first phase is for grades 1-3 and the
second 4-6. There is only one class per
grade but that seems like enough for these villages. We had some trouble getting to the site in
the bus because the road was washed out, but eventually we made it.
We pulled up in the bus and I looked out the window to see a
couple of shrubs dancing. As I have
said, many of the sites we visited greeted us with dancing and song, but this
was the first one with what I think of as traditional costumes. They were costumes with long strands of fur
or hair or something swinging around.
They were brown and black. The
dancers were wearing the traditional wooden masks that were brightly painted,
the kind of thing you see in museums.
They also had long poles on the top of their heads with these strands on
them that they swung around, sometimes at people, while they were dancing. These were traditional costumes of the
Gormanchi tribe.
The whole village was out to greet us again. We walked around the school briefly and then
had a sit down session with the village elders and those who worked at the
school. The chief of the village was too
old to come out, but his representative was there to say thank you to us for
what CRS has done for the village. It
was wonderful to hear about the appreciation for the school. Classes were taught in French as best as I
could tell, since that is the official language of Burkina Faso. I think there was some teaching in Morae, the
most common spoken language, but I wasn’t sure of that. The classes were pretty evenly split between
boys and girls but heavier on the side of girls attending school, not fitting
with the stereotype that we have.
I was interested to hear about the change in the culture of
emphasis on schooling for the children.
I don’t know how long the school had been there but it seems that the
parents and other members of the village saw a great deal of importance in
education, this is a big step in the culture.
We were told that even in places where schools are available most people
don’t send their children to school.
They are in need of the child’s contribution to supporting the family
through work in the fields and around the house. To help with this CRS has figured out that
you increase the education if they provide what is called “take-home rations” What this is is that if a child has at least
90% attendance for the month they will receive a certain amount of food to take
home for the family. In this way the
children are both getting an education and helping to support the family.
The school also tries to provide the kids with lunch, but
they don’t always have enough food for this.
Amazingly, the villagers had gathered together and donated food to the
school so that the kids could get a meal while being educated. Looking around I realized that the donated
food probably meant that those who had donated it skipped a few meals to be
able to provide, what a wonderful display of love for the children and the
importance of education. Villagers told
us that they hoped to get a high school someday for the kids, or toys for the
pre-school area but in general they were simply thankful for what they had.
After the visit to the BRIGHT school we went to have lunch
with CRS field workers and others in the area.
There were some of the priests from the nearby villages that came out to
this picnic lunch. One of them was
Father Samuel, the priest from Tougouri.
When I had packed for this trip I packed with the thought that I would
leave some of my cloths behind as gifts for the people. I figured that Father Samuel would be the one
to get them after I had spoken to him when we were at his parish. His face just lit up when the translator
explained that they were for him. Since
I am much bigger than him I assume that he made some of the cloths work for
him, but probably gave most of them to his parishioners whom they might fit
better. It was a great feeling seeing
the joy on his face at receiving these cloths.
Well, that pretty much finishes Monday of this trip since we
had a long bus ride back to Ouagadougou.
Peace,
Adam
