I've been trying to phone Aisha all morning. And I've been wondering about Yvonne and her children, too- but she has no access to a phone. In fact, I've been worried about everyone in Ouaga- especially my many Burkinabé friends whose simple mud-brick homes stood little chance of surviving the terrible rains of Tuesday, September 1st.

Yesterday I didn't even turn on my computer or television, so I only found out about this disaster this morning. My Facebook page was full of news from many friends in Ouaga- lucky friends with internet access and sturdy homes - though there was flooding and lots of property damage everywhere.

In just 10 hours, over a foot of rain fell. Houses collapsed, cars floated away and bridges washed out.
The only bright spot is that there seem to be relatively few death reported- only five so far. The downside is that with 150,000 left homeless and this year's food crop damaged, there may be lots more suffering ahead for many people.

Here are a few photos:
This one was taken the morning of the 1st, just outside the ISO gates, very close to our old house.

These cars floating away were photographed along the Blvd Charles de G. It's the road we'd take every day to get to school and work.

This is also from our old neighborhood:

Here's one man try to keep the water out:

Here are some pictures from the next day. They show what happens to mud brick houses when it rains too much, too hard.
One of the deaths was caused by a collasping house. Luckily, it seems that most people managed to escape their homes before they fell in.


(NB: These were taken by Alice and Pete- friends from Ouaga. They are lovely people and doing all they can to help out in this difficult situation.)

Burkina Faso is already a country with many issues- education woes, poverty, corruption. The government is trying to meet the challenge of this disaster...That's what the Burkinabé press reports, anyway. But they have little/almost no money, no experience (the last flood was in 1919) and lots of other problems to deal with.
I really fear this flood will be responsible for even more hunger and disease in an already difficult environment.
In the meantime, I try the phone again.
And I wait.

Burkina Faso has been on my mind a lot lately, as you may have guessed from my last post. It's not only the rain that keeps it constantly on my mental radar. There's also the fact that JP is still there, nearly at the end of a one month research stint.

And Aisha just called a couple of nights ago, to see if I'd "forgotten" about her.

The answer to that question was "no", of course. When JP left France he had one duffle bag almost completely full of little gifts and letters for Yvonne, Aisha and other people I'll certainly never forget.

Knowing people there seems to be the only way to get any real news of the country, that's for certain. There's little to be had online, anyway. If you google for some news of the place today, for example, you'll find out that the president of Burkina just named a new army Chief of Staff.

It's very hard to find anything about the news I got last night from JP: There were riots yesterday in the marketplace in the center of the capital city. You only find an article about this if you search with both the words 'Ouagadougou' and 'marché'- so basically, you have to already know the news in order to find out any news- if you see what I mean. And you have to speak French, of course.

As for the news I heard last night- here's what I know: The Rood-Woko market (where I bought most of our household odds and ends when we arrived in Ouaga) caught on fire and was badly damaged in May of 2003. It was an ugly thing- Sankara's graceless modern replacement for the old colonial-era structure. But at least the new cement box was huge and provided shade and shelter for many, many small merchants. Built in 1989 to hold about 2000 traders, by the time we arrived in the country (1999) there were about 5500 present.

It was chaotic and overcrowded and noisy. It smelled like dust, rotten fruit, Oro brand insect spray, blood, spices and a million other things.

The lower level was the basics: cheap polyester clothes from Asia, pagnes, shoes, hair supplies (it was the go-to place for wigs and extensions). And just after the wigs was the meat market, buzzing with big black flies and full of huge, scary machetes -my least favorite place.

Upstairs you could find the touristy arts and crafts and fancier fabrics. In the southwest corner of that level was my favorite place: the bead merchant stands with baskets and buckets full of nothing but brightly-colored beads of every kind.

Getting through the market was not for the faint-hearted. You had to duck under beams, squeeze up crumbling cement stairs nearly completely blocked by the goods of traders who'd set up their shops ON the steps and then hop over the many jerry-rigged electrical lines hanging like 220 volt spiderwebs everywhere.

Crazy as the place was, it was the center of life for thousands of people. This in mind, I had thought the Burkinabé government would make a heoric effort to get the place running again quickly. But the clean-up and repair dragged on for years. It was only just re-opened in March 2009.

And, unfortunately, things haven't been going very well. It's badly organised, the merchants claim, and inaccessible. Business is slow. It's nothing like the dynamic and lively place it used to be.

One real sore point is the presence of a great number of machine-gun toting police officers. This , in fact, was the cause of Thursday's riots. They chased a young man through the marketplace and he died while trying to escape them. The people in the market reacted by burning some of the officers' motorcycles.

There's other news, too. For the last months the crime rate in our old neighborhood has been steadily rising. The robbery at our house last year was just one of many more to come. And now purse/backpack snatchings have become a huge problem, as well.

Good news? There's not so much. Even the climate has gone funny. Out in the Winye villages, where JP does his research, the rains have come late and people are worried for their crops. The people are blaming the Earth Priests, who carried out the proper sacrifices, but too late in the year. They were disorganised and the ceremonies didn't take place at the right time. They admit that the lack of rain is their fault-how could they do otherwise. They're very sorry, but the damage is done...

At about 7:45 on Saturday morning we were headed over to the convent of the nuns of Our Lady of Consolation. The twins were in the backseat with their little friend L, who had spent the night. They were busy chatting away about the great time they were going to have spending all day with the Sisters. The kids had apparently been promised lots of art projects and coloring. Very Vatican II.
But they were distracted, as we all were, by the huge crowd gathered along the Charles de G Boulevard at the Babanguida road intersection. There were plenty of police and a few stopped vehicles almost blocking the road.
I knew it was probably an accident, and from the quiet gravity of the crowd, I was guessing it was a fatal one.


Sadly, really terrible accidents are a daily fact of life in Ouagadougou. Bicyles, handcarts, donkey carts, motorscooters, pedestrians and cars are all competing for the same roadspace and it just doesn't work out well. Add to that no helmets and little respect for and/or knowledge of traffic rules and it all combines into one big, deadly mess.

My children, of course, spend their days in school, not tooling around the roads of Ouaga. I, on the other hand, do lots of errand running and have passed by many serious accidents. And I have learned not to look. I say a prayer for the people involved, but I don't look.

How do I know the accidents were serious? Our driver, Mahama, told me. He is a serious rubber-necker. Even when he's driving, he can't resist looking. Even when I tell him to pay attention to the freaking road so WE don't end up in a bad way.
So, there I was, once again telling the driver to please keep his eyes on the road and not rear-end the folks in front of us.
And then I hear Mallory say in a horrified whisper "He's dead! There's blood around his head!"

I was pretty horrified myself. The crowd was SO big, I had figured that any possible view of the actual accident would be hidden. But I guess people had left a large clear space around the body as they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

"Somebody put a handkerchief on his face. His bicycle is by him. He was hit by a car."

Oh boy.

A block further on, we had turned left towards the convent. I reached back and held Mallory's hand and we all had a talk about the difference between stopping to help someone and slowing down to gawk at misfortune -the latter being a very common human reaction. We are curious to see what hideous fate that we have been lucky enough to avoid. But when there's already a crowd of people helping out, there's NO reason to slow down for a look.
The girls understood -now if only I could get our driver to understand, too.


Mal and the other two girls sat quietly as we pulled up the the high convent gates. As we got out of the car, she asked if she should ask Sister Perpetua to have all the children pray for the man.

I told her it was a brilliant idea, gave her a hug and sent her off.

She seems to have dealt with it all pretty well. This morning, she was awake early and all ready to go on an outing. We were going to vist the new house of Aisha and her family. Thanks to help from MLW, Babzee and my father, they now have a little home out in the suburb/village of Saaba. (Thanks again! ) . This was a project I'd had in mind for some time and I'm SO pleased that it has really happened. Aisha is now 20 years old and supporting two sisters, a brother and their mentally ill mother. Owning a home will get them out from under paying rent and worrying about being homeless. The money she earns from sewing can go right to paying for food, water and school for the three younger ones.
It's a simple one-room mud-brick home, but they are thrilled.

In the photo, Aisha is the smaller one. Her sister Mariam is 12, but much taller. And of course, there's Mally in front.

Two updates:
1. Things are going relatively well for Aisha and her family. She explained to me that her father "put a blessing" on his children before he died. And what he did NOT do was give Aisha's half-brother living out in the village the power to marry off the girls. So, while Aisha won't be getting any help from the extended family (due to a longstanding feud between her father and his brothers) she doesn't have to face getting married to an elderly stranger, which happens to many young girls here. On the other hand, she has a severely mentally-ill mother and three primary-school aged siblings to support. They will also soon have a housing problem, as the people that own the two rooms where the five of them live want them to leave asap.
Besides some direct financial help to get them through this hard time, I also managed to get Aisha a contract to sew costumes for the school musical at the nearby International School. So, she's really pleased to have some well-paying work. As for the long term, I'd really like to be able to help her buy some inexpensive property to live on and open a small sewing business. I have already had a couple of wonderful people in the USA say they could chip in money to help her out. And I have some money set aside to contribute, too. Right now, Aisha is looking at places, trying to find someplace cheap, but not too far out of the city.

2. As for the Niger situation, here is a comment just posted by a good friend:
Thanks, Beth, for being one of the few people writing in English about the Niger situation. But hey, it's all fixed, no? The two French journalists who were detained--completely horribly--have been let out on bail. And that's all that matters, right? Of course, their local chauffeur remains in jail on serious charges; and Moussa Kaka, the radio journalist in Niamey, remains in jail; and Diallo, the writer for the Air magazine, is still jailed in Agadez; all on the same b.s. charges of helping the rebellion by just doing their job.

Let's hope that the same pressure that freed the French reporters is brought to bear to show the unjust treatment of their local counterparts. I'd love to believe we've moved beyond colonialism far enough to get there. Yeah, right...
--MLW

Thanks for the guest appearance, MLW. You said it all.

What did I get for Christmas ? Two bars of scented soap and a calendar. I feel that I am already both prompt and reasonably clean, but maybe I’ve just been kidding myself….Anyway, I’ve had lots of time to puzzle over the question today, as I couldn’t go to work or run any errands. The car (yes, the “new” car) broke down in the middle of Avenue Charles de G. right in the middle of the morning rush hour. The pathetic creature had to be towed to the Garage Seid, where my previous vehicle spent so much of its leisure time. So, my little station wagon and Mr. Seid are spending some quality time together today. How nice for them. For me, not so nice, as I had other plans, including the Bank of Africa, the medical laboratory, video shop, and gym, not to mention a stop at Papiers du Sahel to see how the project is doing over the holiday. Instead, I’m at home, dealing with the kitchen sink- still leaking after two “repair” jobs- and trying to “work” online. Dial-up is just hopeless, isn’t it? I may as well incise my messages on clay tablets and ship them by sea. It would be less frustrating. But perhaps messier. Anyway, I’ve spent hours today trying to catch up on emails and trying to “upgrade” my blog. And I think I broke it. Yes. I broke my blog. My counter is gone , my little flags, etc. They say the original template is saved somewhere, but I can’t, for the life of me, find it. And none of the features work like they promised they would. Which is all par for the course when someone says they are going to “improve” something and make it “easier to use”. It’s never true, is it?

In a way, though, I’m glad I was home this morning. Our young friends Aisha and Mariam came by for a visit, which was very unusual. They know I am typically not around during the day. But, as it happened, I was. The girls told me that their father died this morning. It was quite sudden an unexpected, though he was quite old. They asked if they could leave the two younger children with me today, as their courtyard would be full of visitors. And they thought spending the day around their father’s dead body might be a bit much for the little ones, as well. So, Alima (age 6) and Moussa (8) are here. Mallory just took them out for a walk with Aslan and his little goat cart. Now they’re back, playing on the terrace. Like most young kids, they have hardly realised what has happened. It’s harder right now on Aisha (19) and Mariam (13). Their mother is severely mentally ill and I know that the girls are scared that the landlord is not going to let them keep their little home without a man heading the household. I think Aisha could hold the family together, but this society is still so sexist at base, it might not work out. The elder brother has come in from the village, though, so it’s to be hoped that he’ll be able to figure something out. Though if he comes up with something horrible like : "Aisha should marry some creepy old man", I'll definitely have to do whatever I can to keep her from that fate!

Fabric is an addictive substance here in Ouaga. I have seen a number women become “fabric junkies” here - each with a closet at the back of the house stuffed brimful with lengths of the evidence of their guilt.
It’s true that the fabrics here are very beautiful and relatively inexpensive. Glossy bazin for elegant boubous, linen for smart shirts, bright pagnes for wrap around skirts…
My current addiction is the batik cotton from Ghana. There are several women’s’ cooperatives doing this work there now and the Burkinabe have lost no time importing it.
I bought some last week and went back for more today with Mary Lynn. She loved it and bought two different patterns.
I have bought quite a bit, as I am starting a small business making girls’ dresses. There is a young woman we have known since she was 12. We paid for her school and she has become a seamstress now at age 18. Aisha doesn’t earn much in the workshop where she is employed, so I am going to get her started sewing dresses aimed at the upper-scale clientele here in Ouaga. I think these batiks will really appeal to the cooler Europeans and Americans. Not so much the Burkinabe. They vastly prefer the “made in Europe” label and tend not to like the African styles.
At least with Aisha, I know it will be easy to have the work done well. It is often a big hassle to get things sewn here. And it’s the only reasonable way to get new clothes, as there are few shops and the prices are very high. Custom-tailored clothes may sound great, but after you’ve been back for the fourth fitting and it STILL isn’t right, it can get a little frustrating. Or they’ve sewn it with the butterfly pattern all upside down. Or they fully lined the nice breezy gauze tunic you wanted them to make, turning into an object of suffocating heat-retention and defeating the whole purpose..
Mary-Lynn is having some things sewn by a another local seamstress. I am hoping that it goes smoothly, as she goes back to the US on Tuesday. Not much leeway for misunderstandings. But as they are simple shift dresses, not too much can go wrong.
We hope.