Two Indisputable Truths in the Village of Ramsa

Six months down, 21 more to go. Life here has been great so far. I’ve been lucky enough to do some meaningful work already while integrating myself into my new community. I hope that the next two years are filled with an abundance of work projects for my community and me, because that is what I came here to do. Work. However, if I were only to share my work updates then I’d be excluding the other major platform of the Peace Corps mission, which is to share the local culture and lifestyle with my fellow Americans back home.

A picture of my garden. Here we are looking at our tomato beds where we just transplanted our saplings from the nursery.

As I get to know more people in my community I am able to find people to hang-out with. Sitting and chatting among friends is a daily activity here since there is no TV or internet to hold people hostage in their homes. For the most part I chat with my counterpart Hermane, a group of women who live next door or students around 18-22 years old who speak good French. I’ve recently found myself hanging-out more with these students because they are extremely curious about the outside world and all have strong opinions. However, most of what they think they know is completely false. The lack of information reaching this tiny African village is apparent. These students may see a film in school or read an article in the internet café, and this single exposure will solidify their opinions as if they were fact. They don’t have the ability to do research and find supporting evidence to their claims. Some examples: The Illuminati control the world and chose the amount of people who died during WWII, all homosexuals are evil because one video showed a group of them trafficking adolescent boys, and France currently is doing everything they can to oppress Burkina Faso. These are just some examples of topics that have come-up during our conversations. Of course I try and present the opposing argument but their minds can hardly be swayed. 

Here is a picture of our cucumber section. We will plant some corn inbetween.

I also must be cautious when reaching heavier subjects here in Burkina Faso. During our training we were told not to talk about certain topics, like politics, religion and homosexuality. The reason for this is because the local mentality concerning these topics is essentially set in stone so persuasion is impossible. It’s sad that I have to hold back or lie about my personal beliefs, but in some cases it is necessary. The two big ones are religion and homosexuality. Religion is everything here and I can see it everywhere. Muslims pray at least two or three times a day. Christians don’t just go to church on Sunday but every single day at 6 AM. This is why people here cannot understand someone who is atheist or doesn’t identify with a religion. For this reason the Peace Corps told us that to avoid constant questioning and/or arguments it’s best to say we are religious whether or not it’s true. The same with topics surrounding homosexuality. When the subject comes up I do my best to tell them everything I know but I can never say if I support it or not, as much as I want to. My alibi is that the Peace Corps said we’re not allowed to share that information. What it comes down to is job security. If a Peace Corps volunteer openly admits that they support homosexuality then they could personally be at risk in their village. This single piece of knowledge would make people resent the volunteer and prevent any meaningful work from being done. In the past the Peace Corps had to “medically evacuate” a volunteer from their site because he/she shared their views with the community and shortly thereafter the community wanted him/her to leave. It’s sad, but over here that’s just the way it is…for now. Hopefully in the future things change. 

A picutre of some of the members who will be running the Moringa garden with me. We usually meet twice a week to talk over details of the grant, as well as to start mapping out rules and guidelines for this project.

So, now to the title of this blog post. 

Two indisputable truths in Ramsa. Recently I had a conversation with two friends in my village. We discussed many deep topics, and for each of them my two friends had a warped perception of reality. I did my best to try and persuade them using my sub-par French, but in the end we weren’t really getting anywhere. I decided to try something new and ask them to try and prove two indisputable, 100% true facts that are present in my village of Ramsa. These are educated men so I told them I wanted evidence and everything so that they could prove the legitimacy of these claims. After deliberating for 15 minutes, this is what they came up with: 

• In Ramsa, there exists a sacred location, where if any type of animal is sacrificed then perfect farming weather is guaranteed for the next year.
• Life was better in the olden days when women had no power in the family structure. Now that women have more power / rights (which results from Western culture influence since the start of colonization), life is worse because women spread family secrets and ruin the integrity of the family.

I was blown away at these two responses, because first of all they are not facts but secondly because I expected educated men who have a legitimate chance of going to university to have more sense. I dissected each of these claims with my friends to see what they were thinking. For the sacred sacrificial location, I asked why they wouldn’t sacrifice an animal every year to guarantee good weather but they couldn’t really give me a straight answer. I told them that I would be willing to buy 10 chickens (for $40) and sacrifice them myself to help out this village. I hope that take me up on this offer. 

The HIV/AIDS session at the youth conference I attended. It was awesome to see all of the students engaged in learning about what are typically "taboo" topics.

For the other claim, I was very upset because they claim that every single person in Ramsa feels the same way about women. How could they not see the importance of women and all that they do in their culture? They actually knew that women are extremely successful in the US and in Europe, but this claim was only about small-village African women. Now, personally, I understand that I need to focus much more on women’s empowerment in my village. Here is a fact: all humans are the same and can contribute equally to society if given to chance. So, if women were given an equal opportunity and elevated to the same level of men, wouldn’t Burkina Faso be able to utilize ~50% of its workforce that wasn’t previously available? I’m enthusiastic that over 75% of the members of my host organization are women. Others, with less bias, have said that women are the only ones who work in Ramsa. In the dry season they have their small business and in the rainy season they farm. All the while they have to cook, clean and run the household too. And the best part is that studies show that when women make money in developing countries they tend to spend it on things for others, like medicine for their family or their children’s school fees. I’ll stop here.

Here I'm with the two students that I brought to the youth conference, Zalissa and Philippe. They both killed it and I can't wait to see how they share the information back with our community members.

In other news, I’ve been pretty busy this past month. I’ve been out of site for 3 of the past 4 weeks so I’m glad to be heading back to village for at least a month without any more trips. My two week In-Service-Training was great. I got to see all of my friends in one place again. We learned a lot and will start implementing projects and trainings very soon. This past week I was also at a Youth Development Conference. I brought two students from my village to learn how to be an active citizen and a leader in the community. We will partner together to carry out some malaria awareness raising activities immediately, and in the future collaborate more on other projects. It seemed like these students really got a lot out of it, so I’ll be looking for other conferences to take my community members to. My garden is growing and I’m pretty much there all day long. Three hours in the morning and afternoon, picking weeds and watering the plants. I hope this goes well so that people next rainy season will pick up rainy-season gardening and make some more income. But, behavior change is extremely difficult here so we’ll just have to wait and see. 

Until next time,

MB