The latest news from Burkina Faso
To all dear friends of AMPO, our loyal helpers and to those who have accompanied us throughout many years!
There is so much to report from our small country that I hardly know where to start. Let me begin in a very African way with a warm greeting and ask how you are and how are your families? I hope you are well and beginning to feel the joys of spring.
At the outset I’d like to mention International Women’s Day, of course, because we have just celebrated it. Here in Africa this day is a major event every year in the lives of mothers, aunts, daughters, friends and cousins. They all get together and as many as possible wear a dress made of special printed material with a different pattern each year. We get together to talk, discuss, to show what we are capable of, to dance and to celebrate. This year more than 400 women met in our PPF centre at eight o’clock in the morning. We were treated to soft drinks and biscuits, talks and dances.
This counselling centre is visited by about 40,000 women each year. We provide micro credits and advice on subjects such as family planning, aids prevention, circumcision, hygiene, etc. Women in the most precarious situations are encouraged and given practical help wherever possible.
AMPO is their greatest hope and on this special day they express their gratitude by singing and having fun with us. Nearly all of them have babies or toddlers with them and all of these children are our hope for tomorrow.
The whole of Ouagadougou dances well into the evening and the tradition is for the men to do the household shopping today. With wide grins on their faces, they crowd around the market stalls and it is the perfect opportunity for them to realize how much food actually costs. Some of the market women secretly double the price of sugar, but that is a matter of honour among women!
At AMPO too all the orphan girls are dressed in their Sunday best. Their hair is beautifully plaited, their feet dyed with henna and they share all the small secrets that women have. This year the AMPO boys invited the girls to a football friendly match which they won by a hairsbreadth.
In our new house, Emma Yiri, after the grand opening on the 14th of January, the 30 women and girls expressed the wish to spend a whole day in our official city park. Meanwhile Ceverin, the director, cooked a sumptuous meal all on his own for all the inhabitants – a triumph for girl power!
The opening of this new AMPO facility was featured on television, on the radio and in the newspapers. There were more than 600 guests and the official patron was Herr Germann, the German Ambassador. Together with him I cut the red tape (actually it was green, because it is an eco-friendly project) and I was so moved I couldn’t hold back just one small tear. This is the seventh AMPO house to be inaugurated by a German ambassador and I’m beginning to think it is an honour for both parties.
In keeping with the concept we had an organic buffet which disappeared in a jiffy. Six ambassadors paid us the honour and the sparkling wine flowed as 46 AMPO girls played drums and danced.
The chairman of our charity in Germany, Gerolf Wolpmann, was there along with the chairman of the Katrin Rohde Foundation, Rebecca Trienekens. Sabine Duwe from our office in Plön, whom I’m sure many of you know on the phone, was also with us again in Burkina Faso. It was a great honour and a joy for our staff and for all the AMPO children for whom the guests organised a “games-and-sausage” party. Other friends were there from Denmark, Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Canada and the USA.
Meanwhile a daily routine has got underway in the new project. The Emma Yiri garden supplies us with organic vegetables, all the girls attend the internal school and even the old ladies over seventy are learning the alphabet. I have never heard such lively and amusing discussions on the difference between o and u. It’s great fun for everyone and it brings them all closer together.
A wonderful Italian potter spent five weeks teaching all the women the basics of pottery and she did such a good job that we were able to hold our first exhibition on International Women’s Day at the American Center. The task of teaching has now been taken on by our Burkina potter and he will soon inaugurate our new kiln.
And what about our main houses? All the AMPO children are in good health and are working furiously. Everyone wants to have good marks at school in the May exams. Now during the Easter holidays they spend their mornings swatting and the afternoons are for sport. The little ones are learning to swim, which is quite an event each year. I hold lengthy talks with the girls who are about to leave us. Nearly all of them want to train as nurses, that is the latest fad, and I try to dissuade them, because nursing really isn’t for everyone. It is difficult to choose a career in a country in which there are so few job opportunities.
We are now starting to get worried about climate change and about the water shortages like those we experienced last year as a result. For many years the government in Burkina Faso has repeatedly declared a state of emergency, all too often without good reason. Just because one area of the country was affected, the state immediately appealed for international aid. The fact is that anyone living in rural areas can get by on very little. They have been doing so for a thousand years and are used to all sorts of disasters. People here in general don’t complain. It is normal to be poor and poverty is by no means destitution.
This year however the entire Sahel is affected and especially in the north, the cattle are already suffering from hunger and thirst and the people are getting thinner and thinner. And there is no improvement in sight before the long-awaited harvest in November.
The major aid organizations are already in the country to prevent a situation like that in Somalia (In Burkina Faso we also have thousands of refugees from Mali to feed.).
At AMPO we do not want to distribute sacks of maize or rice. We would rather take sustainably preventative measures for years to come and we need your help. 16 small organic farms have already been set up through AMPO by the graduates of our agricultural college. We would like to dig wells for all of these farms, because a farmer can work as hard as he likes, but without water there will be no harvest. Depending on location a well costs between 2000 and 5000 euros. Please help us if you can. Water gives us all new hope.
After the unrest last year visitors are now beginning to return at last to Burkina Faso. The AMPO guest rooms are booked out for months and many groups from Germany, Denmark and Italy have declared our restaurant to be their favourite place. A lot of friends sit there for hours on end. It is a place where you can sit and watch the street without being constantly approached by anyone.
Many tourists then have a closer look at a typical Burkina wheelchair for the first time, because the wheelchair workshop is nearby, where spare parts are subsidized to the tune of 75%. I just received the figures for the past two months from Edouard who is in charge of the workshop. In February and March we repaired 176 wheelchairs here at AMPO.
He made six trips (810 km) to remote villages where 214 handicapped people benefited from our AMPO workshop. We allocated 11 new wheelchairs.
I have just received a sum of money from old friends of mine in Canada for 20 wheelchairs which we will be able to distribute. We still need your continued support because a handicapped person without a wheelchair has a hard and undignified life.
The restaurant is well frequented and once a month our popular women’s group meets there. All German-speaking women in Ouagadougou are invited and we take this unique opportunity not to talk about work. This year we had many groups of visitors from Denmark since my book appeared in Danish and to my great surprise it is now sold out. Nearly everyone knows our chef Adama by now. His reputation has gone before him throughout Africa. His culinary skills were admired once more by our visiting German board members.
We also had a very motivating visit from four Czech rally drivers. Having arrived in Dakar through the desert they took a slight detour of 2,500 km to pop in and say hello to us at AMPO and to bring us presents from Czech children. These heroes spent three days with the boys at the orphanage in their supped-up, state-of-the-art racing cars and were the objects of much love and admiration. I am now about to return the compliment and visit them in the Czech Republic in April.
The lecture tour is about to start. I’m going to Spain, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany. I’m sure my travel schedule will appear on our website, so why don’t you make it a date? That would be great!
This time I can set off without a care, because a new friend has come into my life, Constanze Ternes. She will shoulder the AMPO cares with me in Ouagadougou over the next 3 – 4 years. It couldn’t get better than this and so once more I thank God, the fates and of course Constanze herself – thank you. She arrived just in time for I was beginning to feel a little tired. After all, I’ll be turning 64 this year, inshallah, and I’m allowed to slow down a bit, aren’t I? O.K. not too much, I promise.
Anyway, a burden shared is a burden halved.
Wishing you and your families a wonderful springtime, less care, more lightness of heart and more to laugh about,
Yours,
Katrin Rohde in Ouagadougou
