My Burkina Journal: Library happenings

Last week our IT person, Damien Kaboré, had a pair of Burkinabè web designers came by to discuss a way of getting the library's holdings online. Although they are currently available online through our website, the result is not quite satisfactory, so we are searching another low-cost solution. We could easily have ResourceMate provide a web presence, and the database could even be live, but the cost would be prohibitive. Another meeting has been set up for next week, so I am curious as to what Mr. Zonga and his partner will come up with.

the SIL-BF website

Many of the faces I see visiting the library are new, but there are some familiar ones I that I immediately recognize as they break out in a smile and greet me with their "bonne arrivée." Ezechiél, too, seems to have gained their confidence as well and many of the men in particular appear to be more comfortable approaching him.

Yesterday someone came in asking for a linguistic map of the country. Although we have have one hanging on the wall in the library, here is one that someone from SIL created that includes the dominant ones as they exist today. There are around 70 languages spoken in the country, but only about 20 major ones. Languages do shift, however, as the population does, often due to people looking for work, fleeing famine, or seeking security from threatening situations like war or terrorism of varying degrees. It is not obvious from the map, but the two main languages spoken here are Mooré and Jula (also spelled Dyula or Dioula), the latter being an African trade language spoken in the Ivory Coast and Mali as well as in Burkina Faso.

Meanwhile, Fina's Saturday Kid's Club is still growing strong, and on Saturday they had "Read-A-Book Day" where the earlybirds all chose something from the "library" to read before the formal Saturday program began. Usually they have a choice between books and games, but today's emphasis was on reading alone. I have some more books to donate to her collection, but I will wait for a future Saturday since Fina will be around my entire stay in Ouagadougou...


Here children examine the available titles in the "library"

and here they each discover their chosen books

Fina, although Indonesian, has some Chinese heritage, so she and I celebrated Chinese New Year by having lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the Koulouba sector, where there are a number of embassies, restaurants and stores where many expats shop. She wanted to show me a new restaurant, but it was closed, so we had to settle for one we had visited before.

As we passed by some of the buildings I remarked how much new construction there seemed to be, much of it probably related to the relatively recent mining industry. As I mused in an earlier posting a few years ago, this is a mixed bag. It is an economic boon for some, but has disrupted traditional village life, and brought out some of the underside of life with problems of child labor, and that of the growing divide between the haves and have-nots. I do not know what motivated the recent killing of the gold-mining executive in this country a few weeks ago, but it is easy to imagine a number of possible negative scenarios. And if the handwriting is on the wall for that industry and it pulls out, much of this inchoate economic development will crumble as well.

This shows several new French stores

Here's a new store the specializes in door handles

and another newby that specializes in fabric

the changing face of Ouagadougou is clearly visible

But, although life goes on as usual, the expats are definitely on guard, and all of us feel a little uneasy. There is absolutely no going out at night, and precautions now are taken which were not even considered in previous years. Here's the latest security risk map from the French government. The zones in red are no-travel zones, the ones in orange (including Ouagadougou since last November) are not recommended for travel :

Here you can see the expansion of serious security issues in Burkina Faso over the past 2 years

And here's the big picture showing the increasing threats the West African region as a whole

When visiting Fina on the weekend, she and I walked to Paule Assoua's house which was nearby. Fina and Paule live on the outskirts of Ouagadougou in an upcoming area called Saaba. Huge houses are being built there, but there is still more of a feeling of a village because people in the neighborhood know each other. We had an interesting discussion about the country's security problem. Paule and her husband live quite comfortably, and they are building a couple of rooms above their house to rent out. According to her, something in their favor for eventually renting these properties is that they have a closed garage which would mean that their renters' vehicles could be protected. This shows how thinking has evolved even in these small ways of increasing security consciousness.

Walking back to Fina's house we greeted everyone we passed African-style, including two ancient ladies selling small bags of peanuts at a rickety table under a straw-roofed stall. Fina bought two bags and was given extras as "cadeaux" in return. The shiny gold-rimmed glasses that one of the women wore had been a gift from Fina and she was now grateful that she could "see the birds on roof top. . ."

I also noticed upon returning that Fina's night guard, Basile, had been examining one of the colorful African-themed children's books I had brought for the little library. . . When I talked about these new titles, I had described this one to the children as "a story about a little girl searching for her father. . ."