These days it rains pretty much every day so it wasn't easy to go around but even though, we did pretty many things.
At first, as always for any visitors in Burkina, we went to Banfora.
This time in addition to regular touristique site visits, we went to see 2 volunteers's work.
One is nurse. She makes the rounds of several villages nearby Banfora for babies' regular health check and some nutrition advice.
The day when we went, her co-worker wasn't there so we helped a bit her job.
First, weigh the babies,
Next mesure them,
Then see if the baby is not malnurished with comparing the list of malnutrition degree.
Her expression was memorable : very happy face when she sees babies growing up well while very anxious when the baby is sick or even loses some weight compared to last month.
The check takes place once a month but mothers with babies in malnutrition are asked to go to buy some medicines and come back 2 weeks after although we never know if they give babies medicines because it is their husband who decides if they buy or not...
In villages especially, there are many mothers who give only milk to babies even after 6 month-year old so that they don't get enough nutrition or who give baby food made with only one type of cereal which is not well-balanced.
She tries to explain in dioula (local language) the importance of different nutritious elements and of baby food mixed with them.
Then she does the baby food cooking demonstration and let taste mothers to persuade them.
We got some as well.
Hummm, this taste reminds us of our mom...:D
School kids are on vacation in Burkina.
Another volunteer working as primary school teacher was organizing a summer camp with her kids for a month (Sing songs, play sports, creat musical instruments, draw, etc)
When we went, it was the day of creation of musical instruments with recycling materials such as beer caps, juice cans, carton boxes etc...
Even though they don't speak the same language, they can communicate with games and smiles.
Another day, we went to a state forest for a walk in surburbs of Bobo.
We heard some traditional music nearby so we went to see what was happening.
There, several women were plowing the field with dancing and singing while some men were enouraging them with playing traditional drums.
I had never seen such way of working.
Women were very powerful !
Yes, because they had been drinking dolo (local beer) while working...:)
We shared some with them.
On weekend, with other volunteers in Bobo, we went to see Loropeni ruin, close to Ghana border which is registered very recently in UNESCO world heritage.
Once the car almost fell over on a hill, twice it got stuck in the mud and we had to push it out...oh at the beginning, some oil well, pertol (gasoline) probably was leaking from the tank...
Oh well, no accident happened so it was very african trip, I should say !
There haven't done many researches so the history of the ruin is in mystery.
I took him to the area where I work often with women, informal settlements (let's say peri-urban area).
Here again, no need of language communication.
Only camera and smiles :D
At the end, we tried bronze art making at my friend's workshop.
First, you heat up the bee wax then form what you want.
Then pour liquid bronze in a mold and dry it. But we didn't have enough time to do all on that day. I will complete soon (I hope)...
Him, his departure was next day so she (in the middle) will finish his work by herself.
How it gonna be the creation at the end...?
It was very hard schedule for 2 weeks but I had some new experience. It was fun !
I hope now that he will tell all what he did, saw and learned in Burkina to his kids at junior high school in Japan...
