This is a pretty crazy time right now. Boxes are getting packed and furniture is going out. And it's not enough that we are moving to a whole new continent. Nope. We are also hosting, in four short days, a party for over 100 people. Right here in this house that is quickly filling up with moving cartons.
I've rented some marquis tents for out in the garden, in case of rain, along with plates, glasses, forks, tables, linens, other oddments plus 120 chairs. And yesterday I ordered 25 grilled chickens from the top chicken grilling kiosque in Burkina. It's over by the Moro Naaba's palace and it's where all the cool people go. Cool being a relative term, bien sûr.


In short, this has all been keeping me busy- along with the yard sale I did all day Sunday. Much cash was made, but it was a hot, long day.
Plus there was a goat wedding on Saturday afternoon - but more about that later.
I'm a bit short on time right now. I mostly felt compelled to post this morning because I wanted to follow up on my last post. It garnered a couple of good, interesting remarks in the comments section, btw -things written by people living here and/or obviously familiar with the problem.


My last post was about my driver's neighbour , a marabout that drove off his five young students because they'd lost his donkey. Well, this weekend, three of the boys returned to the house and begged for shelter. One of them had gotten very ill- not surprising after living two weeks in the streets in rainy season on food begged or scrounged out of trash heaps.
Nobody knows what has become of the other two. They got separated and didn't manage to find each other again. Ouaga is a big, sprawling city.
The marabout took them in again, mostly because of social pressure, from what Mahama tells me. He says his whole neighbourhood has been talking about the man, not in a good way.
"Ils parlent mal de lui" - They speak ill of him, as they should

Burkina has been in the news lately. Media reports about the global food crisis quite often mention it, along with other West African neighbours that have also experienced protests and rioting by hungry citizens.

So, when I search out Burkina news on the internet, I find more and more to read. One of the latest was a report on a new child-trafficking law that was passed last month here. Prison terms have been doubled for the culprits, but people involved in the fight against this crime are afraid that it won’t do much good.
Much of the activity takes place out where JP does his fieldwork, the Mouhoun river area:

“Trafficking origination hubs include Boucle du Mouhoun in the west of Burkina Faso, the Sahel in the north, from where many children are sent to Mali, often supposedly to attend Koranic schools”

He has seen the police stop trucks loaded to the top with children on their way to work on plantations in Ivory Coast and even in cotton fields right here in Burkina.

The article mentions that some of the parents thought the children were being sent to Koranic school. But the truth is, Koranic school here in Ouaga often isn’t that much better than being sent away to do farm work. I’ve written about this before in my blog here. The children are far from home, sent out in dangerous traffic all day long to beg for money. It’s not safe or healthy and the boys learn little but a smattering of Arabic, hardly the recipe for a bright future.

Our driver Mahama lives next door to a marabout (Islamic religious teacher) that has a small Koranic “school”. Every day I’ve been asking Mahama the same question: “Are the boys back?”

At the beginning of June, he told me that there had been a huge fuss in his neighbor’s courtyard. It seems like the marabout’s donkey had wandered off and was nowhere to be found. The five boys searched all day and couldn’t find the animal anywhere. The marabout chased the boys out and said they could not come back to the house until the donkey was found. Not to eat, sleep, wash, nothing. They weren’t to come back without the donkey. The boys have been gone for 10 days now. No one has seen them. They all have families far from Ouaga, so it’s unlikely they found a way to return home. They are most likely sleeping outdoors and begging for food as best they can. Some of the boys are very young- around ten years old.

Who knows where they are now? If they are unsafe, ill or hungry?

One good aspect of the new law is that is specifically addresses the problem of children being forced to beg. Putting these young boys out on the streets and making them beg is now illegal child labour here in Burkina.
However, I have not noticed any actual decrease in “tomato-can boys” out in the streets. And the government here (like governments pretty much everywhere, don't you know) doesn’t always follow through on what they promise. Back in 2007, they earmarked funds for helping streetchildren in Burkina. It's been months now and to date, none of the promised money has been distributed. You can read about it here. The article also mentions AMPO, the orphanage where I first volunteered when I moved here to Ouaga and where Papiers du Sahel began.

Title of today's blog entry: The Wisdom of the Papaya Master
Being a twin in Burkina is special. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes bad. Among the Winyé, for example, the birth of twins can be interpreted as either 1. a reward: What a good mom you are! or 2. A punishment: Doom in the form of two small infants. But once you have got past those early days (which could potentially end up in infanticide), being a twin is good stuff. You weren’t killed, so you must be some of those “Good Luck” twins! At the least, you get “Hey! Twins! How wonderful!”. Even better, as a twin, you often get offered small amounts of money and gifts when you are out together in public, all of which are impossible to refuse, as the giving confers good luck upon the benefactors.
Today I had my twins with me as I ran errands in town. I stopped at the marché to buy strawberries (Yes! It’s finally strawberry season!) and the girls were welcomed with open arms and two fat papayas. Now, this is sad, but my girls HATE papayas with a passion usually reserved for tyrannical despots that abuse kittens in their spare time. It’s really a shame, as we live in Papaya Central, but there you go. The girls thanked the fruit market ladies politely and climbed back into the car, discussing who could be the lucky beneficiary of this fruity windfall. I could hear them discussing it in the backseat as we drove home, deciding finally to give the fruit to some of the “tomato can boys” that line the Blvd Ch. de G. These young kids are sent out by their Islamic teachers to beg for coins. They are supposed to give everything to the teacher, who in turn is supposed to care for them and teach them. These Koranic “schools” are often to only “education” poor families can afford, as the marabouts usually ask for no money from the parents. On the other hand, these boys are often very young and spend their days out on the street in dangerous traffic. And some of the teachers don’t seem very good about using the money to buy food for the children or to look after their welfare. (Please read this for further info on the subject.) I certainly don’t like to encourage this dubious system that at best results in these kids memorizing bits of the Koran in Arabic. Not really a useful tool for their future. And oh yeah- they learn to beg. Great. Anyway, I DO like to give these boys food, which they can enjoy and are not obliged to bring back to their marabouts.
Well, the twins gave the fruit to the Koran school boys. But before they did so, there was much discussion in the backseat. I couldn’t make out much, but I heard Alexa mention “…the Wisdom of the Papaya Master”. I’m not sure what that is, but it sounds terribly interesting. It’s good to know that even though papayas are not tasty (I find them disturbingly squishy and overly sweet), they actually possess some amazing, unsuspected qualities. They bestow wisdom! Who knew?