progress follows white people, because white people follow progress
Burkina is a small country, only about the size of Colorado, and when you are here, you feel it, the whole world and all its opportunities confined to the size of Colorado. There is a small window of opportunity to both get educated and then seek out one of the few salaried jobs in the country. Private industry largely doesnt exist here, there is no mentality or culture existing that would allow for more than the fluke of entrepreneurship or new thinking on the part of the people themselves, even among the rich. Its such a complicated issue, I dont know if I can shed light on it.
The reality of Burkina, like many developing countries I suspect, is very much a system of dual worlds existing simultaneously. There is the town and then there is the village. There are the educated, and then there are the uneducated. There are the people who speak French, and then there are the people who dont.
There is a whole world separating these two categories, and they might only be living a few miles apart. One of them is pulling ahead into the 21 century. The other is left behind. This later category is left without a voice because they often dont speak the national language of French, because they couldnt afford a non-free education system. They are left without newspapers or books. They are left with a communal mentality that binds them to the earth, their extensive families. I blame it largely on colonialism.
If you compare the Francophone nations of Africa with the Anglophone nations, you will probably realize that you are in effect comparing the most developed nations in Africa with the least developed. Its because of the different mentalities the two countries had about their colonized turf. Its very complicated and I couldnt go into it without heavily criticizing the French, which I dont feel responsible doing too directly until I have a better understanding of it.
But the sheep mentality is left over from that. Efficiency is not valued here for the most part. Being on time is not valued at all. Even formal products and businesses will outright lie or mislead their customers.
Two prime examples: The cyber cafe in Koudougou-- which on its very western and official looking sign, advertises that its service is 24 hours. Then I show up on a Monday a little before 10 am to find out it hasnt yet opened.
Or the two 120 piece bags of candy I bought the kids for Christmas. I carefully did the math to make sure every kid would get the most yet equal amount of candy. I should have only had 9 pieces left when I was done giving it out. Instead, I was left with half of one bag.
These two examples, are so African, or at least Burkinabe, examples of them mimicking a system that isnt theirs in a world where no one apparently cares if there is not 120 pieces of candy per bag when its printed on the package. It is because efficiency is not important to them, or expected of customers or employees.
But I am getting off track of what I wanted to say. I wanted to make the argument that a major reason for these two worlds existing. The reason why most major towns have electricity in Burkina but everyone in the country is left in the dark and without running water. The reason why I can buy vanilla ice cream at a mock French bakery in Koudougou, but cant even apparently get a little stool made in village.
I think one reason, though not the only reason, the towns are pulling ahead in such a way in terms of gaining more and more resources, education and health care, is because of the NGOs.
The NGOs set up shop in the bigger towns, particularly the big cities. I was so floored by the difference when I went to visit Amanda-- running into white people at the post office she knew, who were working at one of the orphanages there for a few months, essentially tourists. They made plans to go out dancing. We stopped at a little stand that sold CDs.
There is no post office in my village of 4000 people, no orphanages, no discotheques, and you cant even buy food in village other than peanuts and maybe little fried to balls unless its a market day (every 3 days,) much less a CD in a shop that keeps some semblance of business hours.
There are also, uncoincidentally, no white people in my village. Except me, of course. I have seen white people on three occasions. On two of those occasions the white people stayed for no more than a few hours. On the other occasion, the French woman actually stayed overnight. Wow.
Two of the visits by white people in my village, consisted of a group of white French middle-aged people showing up in several little rented Peugeots. They came, essentially to google at the sick people, and ask a bunch of questions for their own voyeuristic benefit, which my nurse Nana who has left now, disgustingly answered as though he was being paid a great compliment. As though this was his chance to show that no in fact, he was not like the uncivilized malnourished child that came in with its skin red and bloated and seemingly flaking off like a sick ET, which he had to stick more than four times in the arm and foot to finally locate a vein.
(Actually the particular incident Im describing happened with the other nurse Kabre, and the kid probably died because the parents tried to treat him at the clinic instead of going to the hospital in Koudougou like the nurse insisted, because it would have been much more expensive. Last I heard the dad was riding off into the night, when the hospital rarely treats patients at night, on a bicycle that was likely to break down. And the whole thing probably could have been diverted if the couple had just paid the $1.50 to give birth at the clinic instead of at home, because the kid probably ingested his own feces when born. Instead they waited 11 days to bring him to the clinic until he was quite obviously near death.)
Ive been needing to write an entry on how kids die here, on how in village it really is Darwins law played out as cruel spectacle. The person with the fittest education gets to have the fittest health care and live in the fittest towns. If you are a mother in my village with multiple children and you have not yet seen one of them die, then you are the exception. I know because my nurses keep tallies on this and ask the women during their prenatal consultations how many kids they have alive and how many dead, in earnest. And almost all of them have seen at least one of their kids die. Its not a joke. The kids are paying. They dont even get funerals here normally.
But back to the white people.
So, on two occasions, they came in with their little Peugeots. They were essentially a group on safari-- a safari of people instead of animals. There are not too many large animals in Burkina, at least not the kind you would associate with Africa. I am under the impression that at the ivory trade gutted the Elephant population here; Im not sure about other animals.
And I guess, when there are no pretty animals, interest wanes, who knows? But the ones that came were there to gawk at the people, the poverty, and their lack of facilities.
Gawk and not make sense of it, gawk and do nothing, or throw what would be a fortune here at a very non-major problem. Make poverty into a spectacle, a freak show. And at the end of the week step onto their little planes back to France thinking theyve done the good deed of their lives-- the two weeks they spent in hell without hot showers, what a hardship.
Because the people that I live with cant escape from their realities like that. And for this reason I have to slap myself every time I start feeling a tinge of self-righteousness over what Im doing. I do not deserve a pat on the back, they do. Because they live with it every day without the option of waking up from it in a soft bed under a fan. I have that option. I am always only a phone call away from being on a plane home. It would be that easy to leave, on the Peace Corps dime and never have to see a pregnant woman lying out on the floor because theyve run out of beds again. I can leave like I blink my eyes; it is that easy.
Little by little Koukouldi is improving. The government has put up money for a water pump in village since ours has been broken and the villagers have to rely on non-covered well water which is much more likely to be infested with who knows what, and no money for a water filter like mine, worth a couple hundred dollars and imported from the states.
Now the community has to come up with the other half; each neighborhood is expected to pay so much. The only problem is that the villagers are scared of each other. They are so poor and putting up what is in effect so much money to them that they cant be sure it wont be stolen by an intermediary along the way. And then they will be left without money or a pump. This erupted in a huge argument during the community meeting in which two members stormed out.
These little baby steps happen on their own. But they are not the leaps and bounds of Reo and definitely not the leaps of Ouaga. And the reason is white people. White people who set up shop in the capital, white people who come in for 3 month stints, who leave still not knowing a great many realities of Burkina but are working with established organizations who do understand to some extent the needs of their town. White people who speak French.
There are places you can go in Ouaga where you can pretend you never left the states. They are few, but they exist. Yesterday I went into a kitchen store to buy supplies for my house. It took me about a half an hour for the shock to die down. I am going to be in so much shock when I go back to the states. I was just so in awe of the frivolity of it, of the coasters and pretty scented candles and soap dishes with pretty flowered patterns, and how much it all cost to live in this way, how.... wasteful really. All the pretty decorations still around the store for Christmas, the tree bulbs, the lights. It is so far from the reality of my villagers, with their mud houses and falling apart clothing less than 200 miles away.
The experience was like stepping into a dream that seemed strangely familiar, like a slap in the face. “Oh yes, I remember now, I come from the ‘buy buy buy’ culture.” A wake up call to the intricacy of it, to the pros and cons, the benefits and the price that we pay to live the way we do... We pay with our fear really, the fear of what will happen if someone comes to take any of it away.
But I am no longer afraid of being poor. I know through experience that there is life without electricity or computers or running faucets. I doubt there are many Americans who can say the same.
Happy New Year.
The reality of Burkina, like many developing countries I suspect, is very much a system of dual worlds existing simultaneously. There is the town and then there is the village. There are the educated, and then there are the uneducated. There are the people who speak French, and then there are the people who dont.
There is a whole world separating these two categories, and they might only be living a few miles apart. One of them is pulling ahead into the 21 century. The other is left behind. This later category is left without a voice because they often dont speak the national language of French, because they couldnt afford a non-free education system. They are left without newspapers or books. They are left with a communal mentality that binds them to the earth, their extensive families. I blame it largely on colonialism.
If you compare the Francophone nations of Africa with the Anglophone nations, you will probably realize that you are in effect comparing the most developed nations in Africa with the least developed. Its because of the different mentalities the two countries had about their colonized turf. Its very complicated and I couldnt go into it without heavily criticizing the French, which I dont feel responsible doing too directly until I have a better understanding of it.
But the sheep mentality is left over from that. Efficiency is not valued here for the most part. Being on time is not valued at all. Even formal products and businesses will outright lie or mislead their customers.
Two prime examples: The cyber cafe in Koudougou-- which on its very western and official looking sign, advertises that its service is 24 hours. Then I show up on a Monday a little before 10 am to find out it hasnt yet opened.
Or the two 120 piece bags of candy I bought the kids for Christmas. I carefully did the math to make sure every kid would get the most yet equal amount of candy. I should have only had 9 pieces left when I was done giving it out. Instead, I was left with half of one bag.
These two examples, are so African, or at least Burkinabe, examples of them mimicking a system that isnt theirs in a world where no one apparently cares if there is not 120 pieces of candy per bag when its printed on the package. It is because efficiency is not important to them, or expected of customers or employees.
But I am getting off track of what I wanted to say. I wanted to make the argument that a major reason for these two worlds existing. The reason why most major towns have electricity in Burkina but everyone in the country is left in the dark and without running water. The reason why I can buy vanilla ice cream at a mock French bakery in Koudougou, but cant even apparently get a little stool made in village.
I think one reason, though not the only reason, the towns are pulling ahead in such a way in terms of gaining more and more resources, education and health care, is because of the NGOs.
The NGOs set up shop in the bigger towns, particularly the big cities. I was so floored by the difference when I went to visit Amanda-- running into white people at the post office she knew, who were working at one of the orphanages there for a few months, essentially tourists. They made plans to go out dancing. We stopped at a little stand that sold CDs.
There is no post office in my village of 4000 people, no orphanages, no discotheques, and you cant even buy food in village other than peanuts and maybe little fried to balls unless its a market day (every 3 days,) much less a CD in a shop that keeps some semblance of business hours.
There are also, uncoincidentally, no white people in my village. Except me, of course. I have seen white people on three occasions. On two of those occasions the white people stayed for no more than a few hours. On the other occasion, the French woman actually stayed overnight. Wow.
Two of the visits by white people in my village, consisted of a group of white French middle-aged people showing up in several little rented Peugeots. They came, essentially to google at the sick people, and ask a bunch of questions for their own voyeuristic benefit, which my nurse Nana who has left now, disgustingly answered as though he was being paid a great compliment. As though this was his chance to show that no in fact, he was not like the uncivilized malnourished child that came in with its skin red and bloated and seemingly flaking off like a sick ET, which he had to stick more than four times in the arm and foot to finally locate a vein.
(Actually the particular incident Im describing happened with the other nurse Kabre, and the kid probably died because the parents tried to treat him at the clinic instead of going to the hospital in Koudougou like the nurse insisted, because it would have been much more expensive. Last I heard the dad was riding off into the night, when the hospital rarely treats patients at night, on a bicycle that was likely to break down. And the whole thing probably could have been diverted if the couple had just paid the $1.50 to give birth at the clinic instead of at home, because the kid probably ingested his own feces when born. Instead they waited 11 days to bring him to the clinic until he was quite obviously near death.)
Ive been needing to write an entry on how kids die here, on how in village it really is Darwins law played out as cruel spectacle. The person with the fittest education gets to have the fittest health care and live in the fittest towns. If you are a mother in my village with multiple children and you have not yet seen one of them die, then you are the exception. I know because my nurses keep tallies on this and ask the women during their prenatal consultations how many kids they have alive and how many dead, in earnest. And almost all of them have seen at least one of their kids die. Its not a joke. The kids are paying. They dont even get funerals here normally.
But back to the white people.
So, on two occasions, they came in with their little Peugeots. They were essentially a group on safari-- a safari of people instead of animals. There are not too many large animals in Burkina, at least not the kind you would associate with Africa. I am under the impression that at the ivory trade gutted the Elephant population here; Im not sure about other animals.
And I guess, when there are no pretty animals, interest wanes, who knows? But the ones that came were there to gawk at the people, the poverty, and their lack of facilities.
Gawk and not make sense of it, gawk and do nothing, or throw what would be a fortune here at a very non-major problem. Make poverty into a spectacle, a freak show. And at the end of the week step onto their little planes back to France thinking theyve done the good deed of their lives-- the two weeks they spent in hell without hot showers, what a hardship.
Because the people that I live with cant escape from their realities like that. And for this reason I have to slap myself every time I start feeling a tinge of self-righteousness over what Im doing. I do not deserve a pat on the back, they do. Because they live with it every day without the option of waking up from it in a soft bed under a fan. I have that option. I am always only a phone call away from being on a plane home. It would be that easy to leave, on the Peace Corps dime and never have to see a pregnant woman lying out on the floor because theyve run out of beds again. I can leave like I blink my eyes; it is that easy.
Little by little Koukouldi is improving. The government has put up money for a water pump in village since ours has been broken and the villagers have to rely on non-covered well water which is much more likely to be infested with who knows what, and no money for a water filter like mine, worth a couple hundred dollars and imported from the states.
Now the community has to come up with the other half; each neighborhood is expected to pay so much. The only problem is that the villagers are scared of each other. They are so poor and putting up what is in effect so much money to them that they cant be sure it wont be stolen by an intermediary along the way. And then they will be left without money or a pump. This erupted in a huge argument during the community meeting in which two members stormed out.
These little baby steps happen on their own. But they are not the leaps and bounds of Reo and definitely not the leaps of Ouaga. And the reason is white people. White people who set up shop in the capital, white people who come in for 3 month stints, who leave still not knowing a great many realities of Burkina but are working with established organizations who do understand to some extent the needs of their town. White people who speak French.
There are places you can go in Ouaga where you can pretend you never left the states. They are few, but they exist. Yesterday I went into a kitchen store to buy supplies for my house. It took me about a half an hour for the shock to die down. I am going to be in so much shock when I go back to the states. I was just so in awe of the frivolity of it, of the coasters and pretty scented candles and soap dishes with pretty flowered patterns, and how much it all cost to live in this way, how.... wasteful really. All the pretty decorations still around the store for Christmas, the tree bulbs, the lights. It is so far from the reality of my villagers, with their mud houses and falling apart clothing less than 200 miles away.
The experience was like stepping into a dream that seemed strangely familiar, like a slap in the face. “Oh yes, I remember now, I come from the ‘buy buy buy’ culture.” A wake up call to the intricacy of it, to the pros and cons, the benefits and the price that we pay to live the way we do... We pay with our fear really, the fear of what will happen if someone comes to take any of it away.
But I am no longer afraid of being poor. I know through experience that there is life without electricity or computers or running faucets. I doubt there are many Americans who can say the same.
Happy New Year.