Hello again,
Summer is beginning to wind down so I thought that I would
write a post to finish out the trip to Burkina Faso. Part of the reason that I was trying to write
all of this was of course to share this information with you, about the wonderful
work that CRS does, but also to remember it for myself. I have my journal that I wrote on the trip,
and the notes from the visits, so I am able to use this and my memory from the trip
I think that I can still do it justice… as much as I ever have. I will try to finish out the trip in this
post, but we’ll see how long it gets.
Tuesday started out a little bit of a tourist day, but any
tourism in a situation like this is somewhat cultural. We went to a site called Laongo. Laongo is an outdoor art park. It had many sculptures of both rock and
metal. The rock carvings tended to be in
granite. This is a place for both Burkinabe
and foreign artists to display their work.
The main themes running through this park were the ideas of the
difficult struggles of life, but also the hope for the future. I can remember one sculpture in particular; I’ll
see if I can figure out how to upload a picture to the blog. This was a sculpture in granite that had a
human face carved in it with a large rock on top of the head. Once you looked closely, you noticed that one
side of the face was a woman and the other was a man. The heavy part of the rock on the head was
over the woman, the rock symbolized that all Burkinabe seem to have the weight
of the world on them, but it seems to be pushing down on the women even
more. A constant theme that I saw during
the trip was the amazing power of the Burkinabe women, they seemed to support
the families the most and have the most responsibility thrust onto them.
We left Laongo and went to visit a seminary in
Ouagadougou. This is their theology
seminary, the last four years before priesthood. It served both Burkina Faso and some other
nearby countries. The set-up there is a
little different; the seminarians are responsible to cover their own expenses
for the most part. It costs about
$1500.00 per seminarian per year, a huge burden remembering that the average
income in Burkina Faso is $345.00 per person per year. I don’t know how they manage; with the
language barrier it was difficult to get an answer to that. For the most part the seminarians seemed as I
had expected, fun loving men who love what they are doing. When we had a talk with them through
translators I saw them coming in and as with anywhere else they looked for
their friends to sit with, seminarians aren’t that different from everyone
else.
Following the seminary we visited a warehouse where CRS
keeps the food that it distributes. It
has a large warehouse which holds 6000 metric tons of food and two smaller ones
that each holds 1000 metric tons. The
warehouse is restocked twice a year with about 80 trucks to a shipment. There are many of the things that you would
expect stored there, rice, soy products, lentils, corn, and oil for
cooking. It all has to be stored in the
warehouse like this so that it doesn’t go bad in the weather, so it is taken
out to the people from here as the programs allow. One thing that was pretty cool about that
warehouse was how tall the stacks of food were and that all the bags were
carried in and stacked by hand, large bags are 50 Kg (110 lbs) and small ones
25 Kg (55 lbs) and the staff stacks them all very high and very neatly. It is great that they have this facility in case
there is ever a disruption to one of the shipments they could go on for a
little while to continue serving.
That evening we had the opportunity to visit with the
Archbishop of Ouagadougou for a bit. He
gave us a history of the Catholic Church in Burkina Faso and was generally a
pleasant Man to visit with.
Wednesday was Ash Wednesday; I couldn’t help thinking how
appropriate it was to be in Burkina Faso at that time. I somewhat associated it with them living in
an ongoing Lent. What I mean by this is
that the Burkinabe live with challenges and struggles all the time, but they
also have a joyful hope for what is to come, hopefully for them, assuredly for
all during Lent.
On Wednesday we spent some time visiting an orphanage in
Ouagadougou named Kizito Center. Kizito
Center was founded in 1931. It started
as simply an orphanage, but now also cares for children who are abandoned and
some other social reasons that they can’t be cared for by their family. Kizito does not receive any state support; it
is run by the Archdiocese and tries to get some funding elsewhere as it
can. From time to time CRS helps out
too, but that depends on their resources as to how much. We gave them one of the sheep which we had
been given during the trip. Kizito has a
high rate of the children being adopted, most locally but some international
adoptions.
Wednesday evening we had a meeting with the Secretary
General of the Episcopal Conference. For
those unfamiliar with the Catholic verbiage there this is the man who runs the
day to day operations for the organization that unites the Bishops in the area,
this conference includes Burkina Faso and also neighboring Niger. He told us that the Church in Burkina Faso is
growing and that they have just created two new dioceses in the area. One thing that he stressed quite heavy was
the desire that they have for a relationship with the Church in the rest of the
world. They realize that at this point
they need aide from the rest of the world, but they hope someday to be even
more partners in faith.
The Secretary General talked quite a bit about the
relationship that the Catholics have with others in the area. Muslims are the dominate group in the country
and they have a good working relationship with them. One of the reasons for this is the Catholic
aide organizations that serve people of all faiths. He told us that this has been noticed and
appreciated and that the Muslim groups are getting better about doing the same,
and even working together. We were told
that there is actually a better working relationship with the Catholics and
Muslims than with the Catholics and Evangelical Protestant Christians. The Evangelicals tend to only serve those who
come to their churches and that has caused some animosity among both Catholics
and Muslims towards them.
Thursday was a day of reflection and saying goodbye before
we left. We had a recap meeting at the
CRS headquarters and it was great to summarize what we had done and say goodbye
to the wonderful staff of CRS Burkina Faso.
That is the end of the summary of my experience with
Catholic Relief Services in Burkina Faso, thank you for reading. If you feel so moved I encourage you to support
CRS at www.CRS.org
PEACE,
Adam
Thanx for sharing AJ!!
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