Visit

My friends came to Burkina and they stayed in Bobo from September 10 to 16.

3 girls came although I had known only one of them who I met in Osaka just after I came back from Canada. She told her trip plan to her friends then 2 other girls decided to discover Africa.

Although it was 1st time to meet them, they were very nice and open to anything new.
What we did for the week…

・Eat

Soumbala (Néré’s grains) Chicken

Rice Sauce

Restaurant style

Daily style (bring a pot from home to buy it then share with other people by hand)

Tô made with maize (by my collegue)

Florence didn’t like Tô made with millet that she had in the North of Burkina but she loved this Tô. (I was glad that she didn’t bring back a bad memory of Tô to France !)

・ Make

Buy clothes at central market

Order original costume

・Move　

By bike in the town

By bus for distance

Waiting for the bus to leave to a village close to Mali border to stay there for 2 nights

We waited for 3 and half hours but enough number of passengers didn’t come finally the bus was canceled. We had really hard time to get total amount of our bus tickets refund…

・Visit

Roam in Guinguette (forest) only 30min (by bike) far from Bobo

YANTA

Excursion to Banfora (Southern area, 1h30min from Bobo by bus)

Sugar canes fields

Sugar factory

Dome & Waterfall(I was sick so while they were there, I was at my friend’s house, took rest)

Thank you so much Laure, Segolène, Florence for lots of Japanese and French food from France and a great week !

Take an action !

The biggest enemy to clean the city : Plastic bags

A very important policy when we think about environment:
3R (Refuse – Reuse – Recycle)

This policy is in practice by little and little in Japan while in Burkina, it’s not yet recognized well. But there are always some people who have a good conscience anywhere.

Union YANTA is one of them.

Women and girls of this union used to cut down trees in quasi-national forests and sell the branches or charcoal to gain a small amount of money, which is illegal. Then if they are found, they have to pay a fine which is more than their income. Furthermore, as they didn’t plant new trees, the deforestation proceeded.

So Luxembourg project introduced to them cashew nuts processing, soap or karite butter production etc to give them alternative ways for income to selling branches and charcoal.

One of the ways is sewing. Some girls of Union took sewing training and now they can make clothes. Also as one of the Union’s activitie, they sew eco bags and sell them to encourage people not to use anymore plastic bags.

It’s nice design, isn’t it ?
The message says that “protect nature with sustainable rapping/bags”

But it’s not easy not to use at all plastic bags.

In that case, we can recycle them !

Another female association called GAFREH recycle plastic bags that they collect from streets or from informal deposit sites of household waste in the city.

These bags get a new life !

Coin purse

Pouches

Even dolls!

Or, they weave plastic bags like cotton.

The outcome...

Bag

Cosmetic pouch

We can’t recognize easily/quickly the material of these goods.

They are so well done.

But the sale is not easy.

Their quality is so good although the price is too high for local people even for me for certain goods. So the target is foreigners (tourists).

So I am going to work with them in marketing as a way to clean the city, to let more people know their great work and initiative and also to give them more opportunities to gain money.

Here the web site of GAFREH (it’s in French but you can see photos at least)
www.gafreh.ouvaton.org