Fleeing the Frying Pan

I really love West Africa, but I can't wait to leave the climate. I'm back in Burkina after 10 days in Mali (April 8-18). I spent a few days with Mamina and her family in the village (April 19-22), which was lovely. Safane is a little cooler than Mopti, which means that the heat of the day usually peaks at 44 or 45 degrees instead of 49 or 50. The only reason civilization is possible as far north as Mopti is because the rivers meet there. I suppose Timbuktu is further north still, but from what I understand it's more of a frontier outpost than a self-sufficient city.

Anyways, I was happy to see everyone in Safane and they were happy to see me. They've gotten a little rain these last few weeks so the village was quieter than usual because many people had gone to the fields to prepare the ground for spring planting. Until 4 or 5 years ago, Mamina's husband told me, spring planting would already have been underway because the rains would have been guaranteed to come in May. But since 2005, the annual monsoon hasn't come until June even though it still finishes in September. And this year the hot weather started a month earlier than normal. Remember how relieved I was to leave the 45 degree weather at the end of February and head to Ghana? Well, that heat shouldn't have come until the end of March. Some climate change models project more rain in the Sahel, but that doesn't appear to be the scenario that's unfolding.

This time Mamina took me to visit the medical centre in Safane, which serves the 45 or so villages that make up the Commune of Safane. It has one ambulance, which serves Safane and its two neighbouring Communes - that's appoximately 250 000 people. The ambulance is overdue for maintenance but the medical centre can't afford to pay for it. There are a few nurses and midwives, and no doctors at all who serve those 250 000 people on a permanent basis. Annual checkups are unknown, and when people don't feel well they go to the centre later rather than sooner. If people are hospitalized they have to pay for everything themselves, and that includes sterile gloves, syringes, and cleaning the room. The state doesn't even pay to keep the hospital clean. Mamina and about 40 other literate people in Safane help out during state-funded village vaccination campaigns and they are take the opportunity to raise awareness among villagers about getting early care, not practicing femal genital mutilation, birth control, not giving birth at home, things like that. But they can't go out to the villages without the support of the vaccination campaign, which provides mopeds and petrol. They are so frustrated by not being able to improve their community's health indicators that they have recently organized into an NGO-union. Their first action as a group was to volunteer a day of their time every month to clean the medical centre. They want to be able to go to the villages and conduct health surveys while raising awareness about the things mentioned above. They also want to be able to lobby the state to give them a doctor and pay for ambulance maintenance. They've all contributed 2500 CFA francs (about 6 CDN, a difficult sum to raise in Safane) to get their organization started, and they have fundraisers planned. If you know of any health-related NGOs or unions or municipalities or whatever who might be interested in partnering with these people, please pass this message along. I have their contact information and can facilitate communication, including translation.

I left the village on Thursday to spend the weekend in Ouaga and thus cleverly avoided going to church in Yako on Sunday. I go back to Yako today and I'll spend my last week in Africa there. Armelle and Adama get married on May 1st, and my flight leaves May 2nd.

Europe, land of boradband and easy banking, here I come!