Reflections                                      

I am writing this blog with only 4 days left until I go home. I have mixed feelings on returning home part of me would jump at the chance of staying for longer and the other half of me feels ready to go home see my friends and family and return to doing all of the stuff I enjoy doing at home. I am not looking forward to the next week as it going to be form filling, meetings and presentation I suppose this is to be expected with a government run scheme.

So I suppose the aim of this post is to gather together my concluding thoughts on my time in Burkina Faso. Have I enjoyed myself? The answer to that is a definite yes. Is this trip what I hoped of for? Probably not. I came on this trip hoping to get a real taste for development and I'm not convinced that is what I have received. ICS puts quite a high emphasise on personal development as well and it now appears to me that perhaps that is what the scheme is really about. Been the older end of the age spectrum of volunteers I don’t think I am able to get as much out of the personal development side as some of the other volunteers. Despite this I wouldn't change my decision to volunteer in Burkina Faso I have met some truly fantastic people and had my eyes opened to the issues of development and what life is really like in Africa.

Before coming to Burkina as a volunteer I had never been to Africa so I really had no idea what to expect. Burkina is a little known country that you rarely hear about other than in current times due to the border with Mali and their success in the African cup of nations. I can say now from personal experience that this is a massive shame while Burkina does not have a coast, amazing safari, pretty markets or many of the other things African countries are famed for. The people here are incredibly warm and welcoming with Burkinabes going out of their way to help you; there is an amazing sense of religious tolerance here as well with Muslims, Christians and Animists living side by side and the children are all always so happy even if they have very little. I have seen many children playing with tyres and sticks happily running along and it makes me wonder how much of a tantrum you would have to deal with if you gave a child at home that as a toy.

I can safely say that if it was not for I.S and I.C.S I would never have come to Burkina Faso and I am very glad I've had the opportunity to. I have seen a lot of poverty here although it is often quite well hidden and also been quite upset by the lack of rights for women and disabled people but I have also seen that there is so much more that characterises Africa and Burkina Faso than these things. I often get the feeling that the west sees Africa as a project that we have to throw money at in order to alleviate our guilt at how much we have in comparison. I don’t necessarily think this is the case Burkina Faso needs money but it also needs work to help it go to the right places and there is also a lot for us to learn from Africa.    

The other things I have learnt in Burkina Faso are....

• You can always fit more people in a taxi.
• There is nothing that you can’t fit in the boot of your car or on the roof.
• There is nothing you cannot carry on your moped including; live goats, chickens, chairs, planks of wood, your whole extended family and all of these things at once.
• Burkinabe children never tire of shaking your hand twice and day and yelling nasarra every time they see you.
• You don’t need a four wheel drive to off road your taxi or moped will be just fine.
• The more you pester to someone to buy something they don’t want the more likely they are to buy it.
• Money cant buy you happiness. 

HSB and Tigoung Nonma 

Where to start... I have thoroughly enjoyed my time working with HSB and TN the staff have been so welcoming and friendly and I have felt a part of the family. It’s been amazing to see such a strong group of individuals who despite their disabilities and the exclusion of disabled people in Burkinabe society have found the strengths and means to still lead a normal life and to be a part of society.

My parting feeling from HSB is defiantly one of sadness in the past HSB have done a lot but unfortunately due to lack of funds most of the activities have come to a standstill. Unfortunately during our time with HSB we were unable to secure them any funds which leaves me with a sense of sadness that we were unable to help HSB with the think they need help with the most. HSB has the potential to do so much for disabled Burkinabes but they are unable to due to lack of funds. The Espace Bambino centre is only able to stay open until next year unless more funding can be secured. I really hope that before then HSB are able to secure some more funds to keep the centre open as it is a truly lovely place. At the moment HSB seem to be just trying to stay a float which is such I shame as I know they have the capacity to do more. 

As a fair well gift I gave Faridatou my colouring prodigy from espace bambino a rucksack as she didn’t have a bag to take her stuff to school in.

                                                                 Me and Faridatou

                                                           Faridatou and her mum

My parting feelings Tigoung Nonma are that this is an organisation that has a lot of potential to do well. They have some fantastic products but they just don’t have the people to sell them to. TN are sustainable so I believe that with some work and hopefully securing some consistent orders they have a bright future. TNs ability to deal with these orders is something I think definitely needs to be worked on as currently I am not convinced they would have the capacity to deal with big orders. This has led to me to come up with the idea of members of TN potentially taking some of the older Espace Bambino kids on as apprentices and teaching them their trade, something I need to put forward to the team leaders and TN.     

I have also forgotten to mention the Tigoung Nonma open day that we held last weekend. It was a great success with all of the other volunteers coming; there were all of TN’s products on sale, hair braiding, henna and food. All in all the day was a success with TN making over £100 which they were very pleased with.       

Jonny and Christof 

                                                           Getting some Henna done.

                                                                 Tigoung Nonmas stall

                                                                      Shopping

                                                Katie and possibly the cutest child in Burkina.

                                               

Conclusion

In conclusion my time in Burkina has been amazing and definitely a life changing experience even if it was not everything I expected it to be. There are many things in Burkina such as health care, education, poverty women’s rights and disabled people’s rights that I have found difficult to come to terms with and hope that one day can be changed however as of yet I am not sure how this can be done. When you look at neighbouring Ghana and hear that statics that nearly 100% of children in Ghana are in primary education it makes me wonder how things in Burkina can be so different? But perhaps this is a question for another day.

Thank you for reading my blog this may be my last entry unless I have some new reflections I feel the need to share once I am home. I am sure things will look different once I am back in the U.K.

Lucy xxx

                                          Getting mobbed by all the local children

Only 3 weeks left

So only 3 weeks to go which just seems crazy, time here is strange as everything seems to happen really slowly and take a long time (Africa time) but at the same time I can’t believe I’ve been here for 2 months already.

Firstly I would like to say well done and congratulations to Ellie a fellow International Service volunteer who ran in the Ouagadougou marathon last weekend. Not only did Ellie complete the marathon she was also the first women home, a truly fantastic achievement.    

So back to me, I’ve being feeling a bit demotivated the past week or so due to feeling ineffectual and realising there is so much development to be done in Burkina Faso that 3 months really doesn’t seem long enough to make much of a difference. I feel frustrated for HSB as I know they have the potential to even more great stuff than they already do but most of it is impossible due to lack of funds. But two things within the past few days have cheered me up and made me realise that perhaps all I can do is the small things but this is still better than nothing at all. The first of these things is getting a small article and photo of me and 3 young adults who attend a school for people with disabilities on the Coventry City website. So thank you CCFC for publishing that I am always happy to spread support for Coventry City if you would like to check the article out the link is below.

http://www.ccfc.co.uk/news/article/burkina-faso-fans-856058.aspx

The second thing happened today one of the girls who attends espace Bambino Christine who I have never heard speak except occasionally to her mum. Spent all morning playing with Felix and Jen and then as she was leaving turned round and said ‘bye bye’ to us all which just made my heart melt a little bit. I am going to miss the espace bambino kids a lot.

Brazilian embassy

So last week I and another of the HSB volunteers Ash got to go to the Brazilian Embassy with Janine and Sydney. Janine is a Burkinabe volunteer with HSB and Sydney is the vice president of HSB. The meeting seemed to go well with the Brazilian ambassador regaling me and Ash with stories of how his great great grandfather was British and had come over to Brazil to help build railways and never left. Unfortunately the ambassador said the Brazilian embassy was unable to help HSB financially but he is going to try and set up a partnership between HSB and a similar organisation in Brazil. So hopefully this will prove to be a helpful partnership especially with the Brazil Paralympics coming up in 2016.

APEE School

So this week we went back to the APEE school for disabled children and young adults and spent a very enjoyable morning sowing, pape maching and threading beads to make jewellery. The children and young adults who are participating in these activities all have varying disabilities and have been unable to progress in school. So APEE teaches and supervises them in making  craft items which are then sold in a shop at the school with the child/young adult who made the item receiving 50% of the profit. I also finally gave away my dad’s Coventry City shirts to three young adults in these classes.

                                                        Trying my hand at pape mache.

                                                       Concentrating hard on sowing.

                                                 Spreading support for the Sky Blues.

                                                 Group picture with the female artisans.

                                            Group Picture with the male artisans. 

                                                          

After our morning helping with crafts we then had a tour of the school where we met all of the other classes. The first class we met was the observation class where the children go when they first come to the school, in this class the children are encourage playing with toys and interacting with each other. The teachers then make a judgement as to which class each individual child should be go into. Most of the children in this class were young but there was one boy who was 15 and they were just unable to move onto the next class, despite him improving since arriving.

                                                             The observation class.

The next class we went to was class one this class is only slightly more advanced than the observation class. In this class the children are still encouraged to play but with slightly more difficult games such as jigsaws and numbers puzzles. In this class we met Kofi who is funded to go to APEE by HSB, Kofi seemed to be happy and enjoying himself.

                                                            Koffi and another pupil.

The next class we went into was class two where the children appeared to be drawing shapes and doing simple maths.

The final class we went into was class three; class three is the top class so the children in this class were all been taught similar stuff to what is taught in the main stream schools here. The children who do well in this class are then moved into the mainstream school that APEE also run, the children who are not successful are then moved into the craft lessons to be taught how to become artisans.

I know I am repeating myself a bit but the whole morning was a really great experience and the school seems like a truly special place where children with disabilities can learn and have fun in a safe environment without fear of ridicule and physical abuse. This morning has made me even more determined that I will definitely be sending at least one child from espace bambino to APEE.   

Orphanage

On Friday we made a visit to one of Ouagadougou’s orphanages, I had been preparing myself for this been a very emotional experience. However while the experience was sad as there were over 50 children there who have no families or whose families are unable to care for them it was not as sad as I anticipated. The Orphanage was clean and the children seemed to be well cared for and the older ones all had the own beds and they had some toys and medical care which is probably more than a lot of the Espace Bambino kids have at home.

Wheel chair basketball

On Saturday morning I and some of the other volunteers attended a wheelchair basket ball match. The event was organised by Coaching for Hope which is another NGO International Service have been working with. There were several games and the volunteers were allowed to play in two of them. In the first match it was the staff of Coaching for Hope vs the International Service volunteers. Unfortunately the volunteers lost but the staff of Coaching for Hope were massive cheats and kept snatching the ball from us and generally had some quite aggressive tactics. After this we were all put to shame when the professionals came on and had a match which was pretty impressive with the speed they go and there general control of the ball. At the end after a bit of persuasion the volunteers were allowed to play again it was the HSB volunteer’s vs the Coaching for Hope volunteers we won with Sophie scoring two spectacular goals and Felix a third. The Coaching for Hope volunteers were not very good losers claiming we practice all the time which is not true.

Zinarie

On Saturday I, Jenny, Felix, Amy and Frankie took a trip to Zinarie which is a small town about 1 hour away from Ouaga where one of the other International Service volunteer cohorts is based. Zin is so nice and quiet after Ouaga you don’t have the feeling that you’re constantly going to get run over, and the bus to get there is quite an interesting experience been squashed in with a lot of other people with no air con for an hour was quite intense. All in all Zinarie is a lovely relaxing place to get away from Ouaga but I’m quite happy I was based in Ouaga.

Thats all for this week I’m afraid I have gone on quite a bit.

Lucy