Tougan: Part II

Tougan: Part II

August 11, 2011

So it’s been a few weeks….and I have yet to finish writing about my Tougan story… (or use my computer much at all since getting back from site visit)…but let’s see if I can continue from where I left off last time.  [P.S.  Today is my 2-month anniversary in Africa.  Whoa.]

While in Tougan, we were invited to supper at some of Jessi and Tyler’s friends’/counterparts’ houses.  One night was at the home of a woman who has an important role within her region’s education department – I believe she’s the head of the DPEBA or something, but I can’t remember for sure, nor do I recall exactly what DPEBA stands for or if that’s even the right acronym to begin with…. But it doesn’t matter.  All that’s important is that she’s a woman with a big leadership position within Burkina Faso’s school system: a rare feat for any female in this country.  The other night was at the home of Jessi and Tyler’s “adopted parents” – the family who essentially took them in when they first arrived in Tougan and showed them all of the ropes and explained the community’s culture.  We had some amazing traditional Burkinabe meals with these families (who knew traditional food could taste so good?!?), including couscous with tomato and chicken sauce; benga (beans and rice); riz sauce (rice cooked in a chickenish/tomato broth) served with goat meat, eggplant, cabbage, and wa-wa (a green grass-like vegetable); weda juice; besop (a purple juice mixed with mint and a splash of bubblegum flavoring); and brouille (porridge).  Although everything was extremely delicious and probably the best food any of us have had yet in Burkina, the brouille was my favorite part.  It was served to us as a dessert, after we were all already stuffed full from the good rice and sauce, but none of us had any problem finding room in our tummies for a bowl of brouille.  It was warm and sweet, and we added a scoop of powdered milk and a couple more spoonfuls of sugar before eating it.  It was like heaven, putting each of us in a good mood.  Now if we had only had some cinnamon to sprinkle on top and could have curled up and taken a nap immediately after (rather than biking back to our hotel), it would’ve been even more perfect.  Our brouille was made with rice, but it can be made with most any grain; however, I imagine that rice is probably the best tasting.  It was basically like rice pudding – rice cooked in milk (well, in Burkina Faso, that means water with powdered milk added to it) – but not quite as thick, so it was pretty runny and more soup-like.  But still delicious.

Our time in Tougan gave us the opportunity to talk to Jessi and Tyler about the projects they’ve done and to get advice about what works well in Burkina and what doesn’t.  Jessi put most of her energy into developing a girls’ club and doing sensiblizations on basic info and life skills that pretty much non-existent in Africa but are taken for granted in America, like women’s rights (i.e. the right for girls – not just boys – to go to school), goal-setting and planning for a future, hand-washing and personal hygiene, and basic sex education (i.e. how a person gets pregnant).  There’s a lot of interesting myths about that here, such as if you talk to a boy, you WILL get pregnant.  I know we hear that myth in the USA as well, but it’s more of a joke, and usually by age 14, most people know that talking to someone of the opposite gender will not result in becoming impregnated.  But in Burkina, girls/married women actually believe this myth, and are scared to death to talk to boys.  And so they don’t talk to boys.  And yet somehow…they’re not sure how…they become pregnant.  It’s a wild guess, but I’m thinking just maybe, it probably has something to do with the fact that they DON’T talk, and thus don’t/can’t say no to sex, whether from their husbands, boyfriends, or as in the case of most the young middle school aged girls here, from school administrators or other older men in the community with “power.”  This issue also couples right alongside the fact that women are unaware of their rights and that they do possess the right to refuse sex or say no (or yes) to anything they want, even if it goes against a male’s wishes.  It’s sad how many girls/women believe that it’s perfectly “okay” for a man to beat them or take their money or rape them or prevent them from continuing an education past primary school, and that they have no other choice but to comply, because they are females and must obey men, and that is just how things are.  Welcome to life in a patriarchal society.  Because of all this (which goes a lot deeper than I’m willing to describe right now), a lot of the work in our communities will be encouraging confidence in girls and informing them of their rights, while simultaneously educating boys and teaching them to respect females and the rights of women.  All in hopes of empowering both girls and boys, and thus, slowly but surely, developing a nation...