Onions from Holland

These last few weeks, onions have been a bit scarce here in Burkina Faso. Prices are up, and I even started seeing onions imported from Holland on the markets! How frustrating! We work with people growing onions during the winter, and when they sell at the end of the season the prices usually hit rock-bottom or you may even have trouble finding buyers. Everyone sells their onions at the same time. That's why we are working with conservation methods: if you can keep your onions in good shape for a few months you can get really good prices, and we won't need to import onions from the other end of the world.

Ouagadougou flooded!!!

Burkina Faso is known as one of the driest countries on earth. The rainy season, which lasts from about may/june to september/october, brings with it rains which often fall suddenly and heavily, but only come every two or three days. The rest of the year: not a drop! This is one of the reasons why I am working here: to increase the acces to water.

But this week, on tuesday september 1st, something quite the opposite happened: an extreme downpour plunged the whole capital Ouagadougou into the water. After a never-before seen downpour of 260 mm (whereas the total rainfall in one year would be about 600-700 mm) the entire capital was flooded. Water everywhere.

The city is not well equiped for this kind of weather, and thus about 150 000 people have lost their house and just about everything they own. Many poor people live in houses built with mud bricks, which melt like sugar in such extreme rain. And because of the speed with which the water rose many people did not have time to save their belongings. This is a hard blow to people who are already struggling for survival.

How come it's already friday, and still nothing has appeared about this on the news in Europe? Not important enough?

(picture: ocadesburkina.org)

check out this video on youtube

Digging for Gold

In some places not far from where I live someone found gold not so long ago. This has lead to a incredible inflow of hopefuls souls into these places, which were just nowheres in the dust before. The gold-fever has led to the creation of entire temporary villages, where houses are made of straw, but you can get everything you need, just as in a regular town: food, water, a spare tire for your bike, a radio, and even a haircut.

The circumstances in which gold is dug for are daunting and dangerous. Holes of up to 40-50 metres deep are dug straight down into the ground, with primitive manpowered tools. It can become incredibly hot in these holes and air to breath can be scarce, so makeshift airshafts are used to prevent suffocation. There are no ladders, people climb in and out by crevices in the walls of the holes. One person digs and sends up the loose gravel in bags to his companions outside. Sometimes a horizontal shaft is dug from this hole. These are very dangerous, and often collapse, as tools and material for preventing collapse are scarce.

The gravel hauled up can hold indications of gold or gold itself. It is brought to someone on the site who has a machine to grind to dust, and then it is washed to find the gold itself. You need to pay the person with the grinding machine, and you need to buy the water to wash it with, as there are no wells or other water sources nearby (thus this has led to the creation of a small industry of people fetching water and selling it). Thus the whole activity is seldom profitable and only very rarely does someone find his fortune. But those few who do keep the hopes of all the others alive. Imagine, find gold one afternoon and be able to buy your own motorcycle and your own house on the spot, and having the means of taking two wives at once!

Digging for gold is dangerous, and only estimates exist of how many people die in these holes. Some people say the only way to know is to count the pairs of slippers left at the sides of holes with no one to pick them up, or the number of bicycles gathering dust because the owner has disappeared....

Digging for gold is something which attracts young people, young men leaving their villages to try their luck in these dangerous sites. In some villages you will find only old people and children who are left. It undermines the social structure and the development of these villages, and it makes it difficult for our work as well. How to work with developing a village when the whole active population is absent?

My job

I realise that I haven’t really described what I am doing here, in detail. In truth, it took a while to find out for myself. But I think after about half a year I have a clear idea.

My title is “chargé de mise en valeur”, which means responsible for the valorisation activities. The programme I am working in has activities in water availability (such as the provision of water wells), but also, once water is available, activities to capitalise this for the development of the area or village are possible. The most important examples of these activities are vegetable growing and rice production.

Vegetable and rice production are commercial agricultural activities, and not easy. First of all there are all the technical aspects: production techniques, the weather which we can’t control, and constraints on water and inputs availability. Giving villagers willing to produce vegetables or rice the knowledge how to do so is one of the main activities in this aspect. But once harvesting time comes around, another aspect appears: commercialisation. It is not enough to grow onions, to make a living you have to be able to sell them too! And this is an aspect with which we are struggling with right now.

It is a difficult subject, because the world of food production is becoming increasingly globalised and producers here have to compete with rice from taiwan and tomatoes from ghana. We are looking at ways to try and make these agricultural activities profitable and sustainable for these small farmers we are working with. Not an easy task, but interesting and challenging...