First mission in the North

This was my first mission outside of Ouagadougou, the capital city, heading towards Ouahiguya. Ouahiguya is located in the Northern part of the country and is very close to the Malian border. The objective of the mission was to meet with stakeholders involved in implementing a pilot rural electrification project. The idea is to install PTFs (multi-functional plateforms) with micro-electricity among the functionalities in 6 villages of northern Burkina. Two days mission consisted of one full day of discussion on how to proceed, who is responsible for what and setting dates. I do have to tell you that they like spending hours on discussions. Efficiency might have a different meaning in Africa! I also need to add that participatory is the development approach praised by great development workers right now. But this approach certainly requires time and resources to bring everyone together and allow an equal participation on all sides. The second day was the interesting part for me, as we visited the pre-selected villages for project implementation. Well, it was as rural as it could get and the people that I met are the beneficiaries to the services we are trying to create. So I think it has tremendous value to meet these people, to see their livelihood and to really understand their needs. Of course my one
day visit to the villages is not enough to go in
depth about their needs. But it was certainly an eye opening experience and a reinforcement on the thought: I am so damn lucky to live and have lived the life that I have.

A white person in the village, attracts a lot of attention. Little kids are normally scared of white people and they hide away from you. In one of the villages that we visited, they held a village meeting to discuss the project and to express their thoughts. Almost everyone in the village participated in the meeting except the village chef! So my first reaction to this was sort of like “well, if he is the head of the village, he must be the most important one here and so why isn’t he participating in this gathering?” And the response was that its the visitors who will have to go to the village chef and not the chef to them! So after the gathering, we went to give our salutation to the chef, men shake hands with the chef while women kneel on the ground and pay their respect from a distance. I followed the other women in doing so which brought a laughter to the crowd.

It was also during this mission that I had a thought provoking and yet frustrating experience with a co-worker. The conversation started as we were driving from village to village. I was in a 4X4 (big cars are the way to go in rural areas) with four co-workers (all men) and the base of the conversation was the male-female roles in Burkina verses Canada. I have to admit being in the back seat stuck between two men while hearing them bluntly claim that God created men first and women were created later to serve men’s needs was not the most comfortable position. As I further discovered, this fellow co-worker of mine believed with all certainty that women should not have the same rights as men, that he would not allow his wife to occupy herself with activities other than house work and raising kids, that men need to put their women in the right direction……. By this point; I was about to explode with anger but I did a good job of controlling myself. I tried to explain to him that not everywhere in the world this is the case, that in Canada I would have the same rights as my husband would and that I certainly believe his wife is capable of making her own decisions to determine what is best for her…..

The challenging part was the realization that as much as I could not agree with what he was saying, nor could he understand my side. I realized how different we are, how ingrained are the roots to these differences and how challenging it is to try to change one another.