Happy new year, Sahel e.V.
Thank you very much for the presents.
New Year's greeting 2012
The girls from AMPO-Annexe
Archive for the 'AMPO Newsletter' Category
Dear friends and sponsors of our AMPO children,
Greetings from Africa!
Here in Burkina Faso the situation has now stabilized. Politically speaking, things were very difficult in April, but the summer was relatively peaceful. The local elections are coming up soon and we hope that everything will remain calm and our children can continue to go to school unperturbed.
We were able to take in 14 new children into the orphanages and some of them are still looking for sponsor “parents” in Europe. There are lots of girls this time.
As always, we wait a few months before we allocate. This time we had to come up with a special solution for seven-year-old Patricia. She was extremely unhappy with us because she was missing her little sister whom she had always carried on her back and her little brother and was so homesick she cried all the time. She has now gone back to them and her grandmother. She has no other relatives. We pay for food and clothing for all of them and school fees for her. If they are ill they will of course come to our clinic. We will try again next year.
All the others have settled in well. I can tell because in the beginning they walk about quietly and a week later they start hopping across the courtyard. We then know that things will work out and they begin to feel at home with us. When they first come here they all have a medical examination, they talk to our psychologists and they are given clothing. This year we even have a school uniform for those who attend our own school, so that they all feel on an equal footing.
As far as the orphanages are concerned, everything is running smoothly under the reliable supervision of our teacher Mathias Zoré and our psychologist Christine Adamou. I am hardly needed at all there, apart from playing with the children at weekends. I read to the little ones, which is great fun because French is a foreign language for all of us, for me too and I’m trying to read Pippi Longstocking! The very names have us falling off our bench laughing.
With the older ones I have endless heated debates on subjects such as morality or responsible behaviour. They are all highly interested and they even skip football training to attend. Isn’t it wonderful?
The MIA and ALMA houses have also scored a success. We managed to reintegrate 15 out of 20 young girls into their families who had rejected them for reasons of local tradition. It was a hard job requiring months of patience and tact. Respect and politeness towards the chief of the clan and the father of the family is most important. We practise this every day (even if we are bursting with anger, it must not show). Our constant concern is for the wellbeing of all of our children. That is our number one priority.
Respect is also at the foundation of our new generation project, Emma Yiri, which will start operating as from December and will be officially opened mid January 2012 – hopefully by our new German Ambassador who has just taken office.
I go to the building site every other day and things are progressing well. However the building costs have increased immensely. Cement, wood and especially iron now cost about double our original estimate. We are very thrifty but the costs are simply escalating. Help!
I am confident that this new facility will be a huge success, especially since the project leader Ceverin Ouedraogo has already selected all the girls and the elderly women from many villages, much to the approval of our team of directors. Our secretary, Ricarda Dittrich from our office in Plön is here on a visit with her husband at the moment and after inspecting the project today, they too agreed that Emma Yiri will be something really special. This weekend we are expecting two potters from Italy. They are financing the pottery workshop and the kiln. They are going to meet our own potters here to take stock of the situation.
And so there is always a great deal to be done and we face many different challenges. At the farm we are going to plant an agave field soon. The agave is the plant of the future and I’m rapidly becoming a specialist.
Cooperation with our suppliers for the products we sell in the AMPO Shop is developing day by day. Nearly all of them are former AMPO kids who now have their own workshops. So whatever you buy from us goes to help their small families. It is not easy to get orders here in Ouagadougou and it really does help them if they can produce for the AMPO Shop. Please have a look at our new AMPO catalogue or visit our website www.sahel.de.
I have to go now. It has become a tradition for me to invite all the children who have passed their school leaving certificate exams to my home for a chicken dinner once a year, along with their tutors who of course played a major role. For some reason or other we missed it last year and now they are all shouting for their chicken! But we now have 25 kids plus their tutors and my small house can’t take them all. So this evening at 7 o’clock we are having the dinner at the AMPO restaurant.
To all of you sponsors I can only say it would be wonderful if you could just drop by to congratulate your ”adopted” children on their success.
Since that is not so easy to arrange I shall pass on your good wishes to the children on your behalf and we will raise a glass of hibiscus juice to your health. Please accept our thanks for your good deeds that have brought about this success.
I will be back in Europe again this year for a brief lecture visit of ten days in Denmark. My book has now appeared in Danish. Thanks to some old friends an AMPO Association has been founded in Denmark. This will give me the opportunity to hold my own two grandchildren in my arms, sadly only for a few hours. Then I have to stay here for a few months, over Christmas of course before I start on my travels again in 2012: lectures in Spain, Austria, Germany and – possibly even in the United States – are on the cards. Just imagine – Katrin in New York!
Who would have thought it when I once struck my tent in Germany to build a small orphanage here and lead a quiet, peaceful life?.
Instead I travel the world as a roving ambassador for children in Africa and a fierce champion for equal opportunities. But I do it all with pleasure. However, my favourite pastime is sitting quietly on the farm, watching the children play and listening to the trees growing.
All the AMPO children send you their thanks and best wishes in the runup to Christmas, wishing you time for your families, health and happiness.
Yours,
Katrin Rohde from Ouagadougou
SAHEL e.V.
Am Strohberg 2 • 24306 Plön • Tel.0 45 22 – 78 98 85 • Fax 0 45 22 – 78 98 86
Email: info.sahel@sahel.de Internet: www.sahel.de
Spendenkonto bei der Förde Sparkasse Plön: • Kto. Nr. 5785 • BLZ 210 501 70
Internationale Bankverbindung: IBAN (Konto-Nr.):
DE27 2105 0170 0000 005785 BIC (Bankidentifikation): NOLADE21KIE
Dear friends of our children in West Africa,
I hope you are all well, that you are enjoying the summer with your families in Europe and you have managed to shuffle off your daily cares for the time being. Here at AMPO we are in the midst of preparations for our summer camp in the country which will take place on July 15th for two weeks. We are busy packing boxes with Frisbees, Monopoly, bowls and Scrabble, hundreds of bars of soap, medicines and books and lots of sticking plaster. The various kitchens can only be packed up at the last minute because we still need our huge cooking pots every day. However, they are being used to store dried gombo and sacks of rice, because they are more expensive in the country than here in the city.
The cost of living has gone up by more than 30% in Burkina Faso and that is the reason for the general unrest which is being expressed in many demonstrations – peaceful at the moment.
This time we are travelling with all the children from the orphanages, plus the people from MIA and ALMA and the children form the rehab centre, some of them physically handicapped, who don’t have a home to go to. All the teachers from the various projects are coming with us this time, so we need busses and accommodation for about 280 people, large and small.
Thank God for our usual modesty, so we rent an empty school building and can sleep in the classrooms. It’s a good job we don’t have beds at AMPO because the kids would otherwise have problems changing to sleeping on simple mats. Everyone is getting excited already and some have started making fishing rods and skipping ropes. The bigger ones help the small ones – something we are really good at. As a surprise on the day we set off I’m going to buy 40 drums for the kids, because they will then have time to practise. All the kids who have just left school (now young adults) will give us a hand at summer camp.
In the past few months the children have been very nervous because they were unable to go to school for six whole weeks on account of the unrest in the country. Shots were being fired on the road leading to school. Fear is not very conducive to concentration. At AMPO were able to carry on with schoolwork every day thanks to the private tutors and this was a great help: yesterday the results of the CEP exams (after 6 years at school) came through and all 8 AMPO children passed. We are now waiting for our BPC and high school diploma results. It is looking good. We are very happy with the children; they express their thanks to us and to all of you with a really good performance.
We are already looking forward to the new intake of youngsters who are currently in the selection process conducted by at team of psychologists and teachers. It is a lot of work, because we cannot take everything at face value and we visit all the candidates at home to check on all the information. We only take the very poorest children. At the same time AMPO has to start with the organisation of tuition fee assistance for external children, which costs around Euro 20,000 a year. This is the result of the truly generous donation from the Jack-O company which makes it possible for 500 children to attend primary school and a further 200 to attend high school. We only assist those who already perform well because we want our country to make progress. Lazy kids have no chance. In the meantime we have entered all the names and records into our computer – the advance of technology – but it would be nice, however if we also had the electricity supply to go with it every day. Sometimes we are still without electricity for 4 to 6 hours a day.
There has been a lot of remodeling going on at AMPO this year, because the workshop for the handicapped is scheduled to move, the tailoring workshop is expanding and has to move, the children’s kitchen will move into the tailoring workshop and we will set up a new hairdressing salon to train our girls, something that has been on the wish-list for a long time and now we can make it happen. The restaurant kitchen will expand, which is urgently required, because our trainee chefs are tripping over each other. Have you ever seen a restaurant with 60 places, catering at the same time for 300 guests at an embassy reception, with a kitchen of 3 square metres? Outside temperature 45° and working over a hot stove? African logistics can be dramatic, but let me tell you, it works! Things should be easier now, however.
The first buildings in the new “Emma Yiri” generation project are complete. After the third attempt at drilling we found a good supply of water 48 metres down. Thank God and Inshallah! Everything was depending on that and I spent 3 whole days quaking beside the drilling site … all went well. Now we are waiting for the first heavy rains to pass and then we can start building the school and the office in August. Parts of the wall are already quite colourful. It will probably be completed in October. Meanwhile I have to make another two trips to Europe, lecturing in Portugal and Denmark.
In the meantime it has become official: after careful examination (over several days), Katrin Rohde has become an Ashoka Fellow, with approval from Washington. You might want to Google it. I am in the illustrious company of 2000 other changemakers from 70 countries. I have just returned from a 4-day conference in Paris to which I was invited. This conference involved a huge amount of work and I could think of nothing other than making progress in Africa. That is exactly where I fit in with all my ideas, something which does not happen very often. In the picture you can see our special working group on Africa after a 2-hour meeting, people with the most incredible ideas, including on the right a Belgian from Tanzania and Mozambique who breeds rats to detect landmines, a woman from Uganda who protects gorillas by giving the local population who eat them the possibility to access other sources of income. In the middle is Bill Drayton, the founder of Ashoka, an elderly gentleman full of charisma, a highly motivated, satisfied professional. Ashoka Fellows tackle the problems of others and develop practical models: A young girl, 16 years old, is told she has cancer and she sets up a global network “Girls for girls” in which, 2 years down the line, 4,500 girls can talk about their problems and come up with solutions. An elderly Turkish farmer plants 8 hectares of wheat using organic farming methods and starts a lobby group in which after 4 years there are now 50,000 farmers in Turkey apply organic farming methods. He is illiterate and only speaks Turkish. I received the award for the idea and implementation of our Tondtenga farm, offering young people in the country a chance to prevent rural exodous, combat the streetkid phenomenon and set up hundreds of organic farms with young farmers who spread the idea among their neighbours in turn.
Nevertheless I felt very small and I am aware that there is still a lot of work ahead. We are now going to set up an Ashoka radio station for the whole of Africa. I am highly motivated and grateful when I see after 20 years that many of our orphaned children have turned into trend-setting young people, precisely those with whom we will have a real future. I believe that we can still work on our current model for a better Africa.
Of course, hand in hand with all of you. Isn’t it exciting? But first we are off to summer camp, yippee! Thanks to all your help we will relax, hang around doing nothing, sing and play and look forward to the coming year with renewed vigour.
With very best wishes from Ouagadougou,
Katrin Rohde
SAHEL e.V.
Am Strohberg 2 • 24306 Plön • Tel.0 45 22 – 78 98 85 • Fax 0 45 22 – 78 98 86
Email: info.sahel@sahel.de Internet: www.sahel.de
Spendenkonto bei der Förde Sparkasse Plön: • Kto. Nr. 5785 • BLZ 210 501 70
Internationale Bankverbindung: IBAN (Konto-Nr.):
DE27 2105 0170 0000 005785 BIC (Bankidentifikation): NOLADE21KIE
Latest news from Burkina Faso
Dear AMPO friends, donors to our children in Burkina Faso and contributors,
I trust this letter finds you all well.
Here in West Africa times are uncertain and this makes me realize how much you support us with your kind thoughts. A curfew was imposed for four nights, but it was lifted again yesterday. We could hear a lot of gunfire, pistols, rifles, mortar fire. It is quite uncanny in the stillness of the night.
A few weeks ago there was an incident in Koudougou which resulted in student protests. Police stations and court buildings were wrecked and the protests spread to other towns. These demonstrations clearly showed how dissatisfied students and schoolchildren are with their living conditions and they were joined by the military. Schools were closed for four weeks. School fees have increased year by year and the military is badly treated and poorly paid. The cost of living is rising unbelievably. Banks and petrol stations closed. How was I supposed to pay wages and salaries?
Temperatures rose for a few weeks in more ways than one, because at the same time the thermometer went up to 48 degrees – strenuous for everyone in this country where patience is running low and nerves are frayed.
On top of that there were the uprisings in Libya, Syria and in many other countries and – the worst for us – in the Ivory Coast. More than three million people from Burkina Faso live there and nearly everyone here has a relative there. These are our direct neighbours and hundreds of people lost their lives there during the civil war, one of the most terrible wars of all. For all that, Burkina Faso is one of the most peaceful countries on earth where acceptance and genuine tolerance are part of the basis of our daily life.
Again the President started by listening for days to everyone in authority, from the judiciary to the military and religious leaders and that helped to calm the situation. In churches and in mosques, on the radio and on television people pray together for peace and for that I love dear, old Burkina. The curfew was raised yesterday. I was in town in the evening and the place was jumping. Everyone was celebrating the return to freedom.
Let’s see how things go on from here. We are following closely the developments in the Ivory Coast, hoping and praying that the fighting will finally stop and the country returns to peace.
So much for that situation. Here at AMPO life goes on. Since all the schools were closed, the only concession we made was to shift the children’s extra tuition to daytime and the children were no longer allowed to sleep outdoors, which they normally like to do when it gets so hot. But it was too dangerous with bullets flying around and with murmurs of protest they had to give up their wonderful, huge spread of communal mats under our mango tree.
The schools are due to start up again today. We made good use of the time and practically covered the entire curriculum with the AMPO children day by day, so they are well prepared – but what about the others? Prior to these events I spent ten days in Spain on a lecture tour around Alicante. Our friends there prepared the trip well and I am very pleased to report that our project for undernourished children is funded for next year. Thank goodness, because 2400 babies and infants were striving to survive. All but one succeeded and our heartfelt thanks go to Spain.
Another container has just arrived and in addition to the large boxes of clothing sent regularly by Bonita, there were tools, lots of pens and pencils, hand-knitted baby jackets, sports equipment, sewing machines and office equipment. Large quantities of spectacles came from Germany and the Czech Republic as well as toys and jotters for the children.
One kind lady donated 200 road-safety jackets; DEKRA sent a load of reflectors and “cappies” so that all our children are now well protected on their way to school. In this city of 2 million inhabitants there is not a single pedestrian crossing and nearly all of the children have to cross a 4-lane road on the way to school, a task that demands a great deal of patience and considerable attention, even for adults. We also received a full set of new equipment for our kinesiology therapist in the rehab centre. Roc said this was unique in Burkina Faso, with all these racks and other technical apparatus, even the large hospital is not so well equipped. Many thanks! Some of it will go to the children’s hospital. This time we had enough willing hands to unpack the container, because the children were off school, of course. Once again we would like to thank all those who sent parcels, those very kind sponsors and other donors.
Fortunately I was able to make sure before I left that the famous wall around our new Emma Yiri project is almost complete. The remainder of the building supervision was left in the reliable hands of my husband. The agricultural students from the Tondtenga farm have already planted 80 trees for their little sisters, an enormous job given the tough soil we have. The trees are watered twice a day by our lovely old neighbour with our donkey, Uschi, hauling the water barrel. Each tree is surrounded by a small fence, otherwise they would have been eaten long ago by the goats roaming around freely. At the end of the week we’ll start painting the wall in the various colours according to the wishes of you, our donors. It is so exciting. The simple colours like red, pink, yellow, blue, orange, white, black, turquoise, lilac, ruby red, terracotta and olive green, bright green, mint green, etc. we’ll paint together with the children. Special wishes are a bit trickier, like the German tricolor “black, red and gold” (you can’t get gold paint in Burkina Faso) or neon green (no neon paint here either). And how on earth am I supposed to fit the words “Women for peace” in English, German and More into three metres? We will have to find an African solution to all of these problems. I’m really looking forward to it. It will be great fun. Yesterday afternoon I visited the MIA and ALMA homes and was pleased to note that things were quiet and running smoothly there.
I went to the farm school in the morning. There are 18 piglets, four white and brown calves and a black foal named Fofo (in the language of the Peul, Fulfulde, this means “welcome”). And so we are surrounded by hope.
Hope along with us, stay with us and receive our heartfelt thanks Yours,
Katrin Rohde from Ouagadougou
***
To all our donors and friends of Sahel e.V. and AMPO,
as you can tell from what Katrin Rohde writes, everything is going well at AMPO in spite of the difficult times in Burkina Faso. At the office we have completed the statement of account for the year ending 2010. The annual reports for each AMPO facility have been translated and together with the activity report for Sahel e.V., they are now accessible on our website www.sahel.de
You will also find the itinerary for Katrin Rohde’s lecture tour in Germany in May 2011. Perhaps you may be able to participate in one or other of the events with Katrin Rohde. You will be most welcome. One final item worth mentioning – we have been registered on the “Bildungsspender” internet portal for some time now. Here you have the possibility to support us quite simply when you purchase on the internet.
Visit http://www.bildungsspender.de/ampo
Please contact us if you have any questions or comments.
Wishing you lots of spring sunshine, thanks for your support and very best wishes,
Ricarda Dittrich and Sabine Duwe from the office in Plön.
SAHEL e.V.
Am Strohberg 2 • 24306 Plön • Tel.0 45 22 – 78 98 85 • Fax 0 45 22 – 78 98 86
Email: info.sahel@sahel.de Internet: www.sahel.de
Spendenkonto bei der Förde Sparkasse Plön: • Kto. Nr. 5785 • BLZ 210 501 70
Internationale Bankverbindung: IBAN (Konto-Nr.):
DE27 2105 0170 0000 005785 BIC (Bankidentifikation): NOLADE21KIE
Latest news from Burkina Faso
Dear friends of AMPO,
Here you have a somewhat longer letter from Africa – an extra delivery, so to speak. First of all, the most important news is that all the AMPO children are doing well. This is my 50th newsletter to friends and donors of our children’s projects in Ouagadougou. It makes me proud to think that so far all of us have done a good job, you wherever you are and we here.
Let me take this opportunity to tell you about a recently planned project in BF. Actually I had sworn a solemn oath not to start any new projects. The idea was to develop and continue the work we already started, taking time to plan ahead. I usually keep my promises but this time I had no choice. In recognition of our efforts to help the flood victims the year before last, the Mayor expressed the thanks of the community by donating a piece of land, 3,200 m², for social development. This is an incredibly generous gift here in Ouagadougou, where standard properties are 250 m². I could not refuse.
Piece of land
After careful consideration the following plan emerged.
The property lies on the outskirts of the capital and there we intend to set up a small vegetable farm for twenty girls and five elderly women, beggars currently living in appalling circumstances. We want to do something to combat rural exodus, because the girls will be able to pass on their knowledge of eco-friendly agriculture and small livestock farming when they return to their own villages later. We have already achieved tremendous results applying this system in our larger agricultural college for boys.
The young girls will look after the elderly women, who in turn will be able to advise them on the tried and tested traditions that are slowly dying for want of being handed down. So it will be a farm for several generations. We have also included a small pottery workshop, because pottery can be done without much effort later in the villages and will provide a source of income.
Dear friends of AMPO, most of you will not yet have heard of this new project. Last year we started to raise money for the surrounding outer wall which is an absolute must in Africa. We are selling it by the metre and we are about half way so far. Each metre costs 80 Euros and the buyer can choose the colour. Bright red, peppermint green, dark blue, this wall will be the only one of its kind in Burkina Faso.
We also have the funding for digging the well and for some of the buildings including the pottery workshop.
After twenty years’ experience of development aid in this country I can safely say that it is relatively easy to find donors for a house, a well, or even a chicken coop. At the end of the day donors like to receive a positive report, details of the cost estimates and paid bills and a real photo of the actual project they have financed. I can understand that. Even the German Government provides only technical support rather than operating social facilities in Africa.
Many of the donated buildings in this country are standing empty because no one is there to provide financial support to continue the project. This is not only a great pity, but also a sign of lack of confidence in Africa, and rightly so in my opinion. In this country with an illiteracy rate of 80% (how do you write out a receipt? Often people sign by putting three crosses or their thumbprint.) it is extremely difficult to do proper bookkeeping and keep expenditure under strict control. AMPO can do it. Many years of practice enables us to pass any audit with flying colours.
It is a much tougher challenge, however, to put life into a house. Young people need so much support to be able to fend for themselves later in life. Over the past 15 years AMPO has shown that it is possible to offer a future to kids who have already been written off. Only yesterday I had a visit from Bouba, an orphan who grew up at AMPO. He successfully finished school and went on to qualify as a male nurse and he has now been working for three years 400 kilometres away, practically in the desert in the north of the country. He is second in charge of a hospital unit treating all kinds of poverty-related illnesses without such luxuries as laboratory test results and x-rays, helping to bring children into the world by the light of a paraffin lamp. He is relentless. Next year he will go back to college to train for two years as an “attaché de santé”, a well-paid job in this country.
These people are the future of Africa. And these are the people we want to find for the new farm project for girls.
We are still lacking the 3,100 Euros per month to finance the project. That covers everything from medical expenses to breakfast porridge, rabbit food and the trainers‘salaries, wellington boots and seed for planting.
The bottom line is 37,000 Euros per year which could be spread over a number of donors. Based on my experience I have never started a project without the necessary finances for daily requirements for the first three years. This is the reason I’m informing you of our plans, hoping that you will trust in AMPO. Many of you are regular donors and spread the word among your friends, so that year for year our number of friends increases. Any additional contribution to this new project should not detract from the other „regular“ donations you make, as this would have an adverse effect on the ongoing expenditure we have for the rest of the children. We are talking about an extra donation. If we could come up with twelve donors contributing 3,100 Euros each per year, it would be enough to support the entire farm project and its inhabitants for at least one year. We are waiting for this security before we complete the building project.
“Dieu est grand”, as we say and I do believe that. I would like to send out a signal in the form of this unique wall. I think if we don’t start building the wall now, I will have to return the property to the Mayor. No way! The rainy season starts in May and any building activity is then out of the question. And I’m sure that by October we will have enough generous people who wish to give our girls a chance. If we roll our sleeves up – and we can – the new project should be up and running early 2012.
I delight in all of you, every day from morning till night, because without you AMPO and the very life of our orphans and literally thousands of other people would be inconceivable. In our clinic alone (I know exactly because we are just doing our annual statistics) we treated more than 60,000 patients in 2010. In our social service centre we listen to the concerns of nearly 100,000 people, mostly women and mothers. In many cases we come up with solutions together.
And we will find donors for our new girls’ farm, of that I am certain. As always in our case, it is a small project. And it should grow and develop in an African way. Major projects often fail in the reality of life in the raw dealing with such poverty. The concept on which all of our facilities are based has proved to be successful after 15 years of work. You can contact Sabine Duwe in our office at any time for further information on figures, budgetary plans, individual costs, official applications, and any outstanding items. She knows it all and we work very closely together.
The name of the new project is “Emma Yiri”, Emma’s farm, and Emma is my newly-born granddaughter.
I hope you have an especially good day, ploughing over our latest ideas.
Yours from Ouagadougou,
Katrin Rohde
SAHEL e.V.
Am Strohberg 2 • 24306 Plön • Tel.0 45 22 – 78 98 85 • Fax 0 45 22 – 78 98 86
Email: info.sahel@sahel.de Internet: www.sahel.de
Spendenkonto bei der Förde Sparkasse Plön: • Kto. Nr. 5785 • BLZ 210 501 70
Internationale Bankverbindung: IBAN (Konto-Nr.):
DE27 2105 0170 0000 005785 BIC (Bankidentifikation): NOLADE21KIE
