What is Burkina Faso?

Well, you can read more factual info. about Burkina Faso online or you can read what I have to say about it and my personal experience (or both). Burkina is a land-locked country with very few resources, therefore making it the 27th poorest country in the world. The average income per year is $1200. Can you imagine? The unemployment rate is so high that there is a lot of emigration to neighboring countries like Ghana and the Ivory Coast to work on the plantations there.

I lived there for the first 6 years of my life among the Bwa people of the Red Bobo tribe. I lived with my family in a village, Ouarokoye (water-koy) on top of a hill. We lived in a cement house with a kitchen and bathroom. But, our water came from a well down the hill, which had to be pumped up the hill each day to fill our cisterns. We had "running" water because it would then be pumped from the cistern to the barrels above the house.

When I was real young, I remember taking sponge baths because we didn't have a water heater, so mom would heat water on our kerosene stove and put it in big tubs. We also had a kerosene fridge, which my mom labored over for hours, refilling the tank and making sure the pilot was lit. We had all of these appliances because we did not have running electricity. Dad would run the generator a couple of hours a night for supper and family time of reading and games, etc. We would also run the wringer washer (anyone seen one of those bad boys?) a couple of times a week for laundry and then hang up all of the clothes. It was a whole day process, wringing from the washer to the first rinse, then ring again for the second rinse, then wring again to hang up. Just writing about it now makes me very thankful for my modern day appliances that make it so much less time consuming.

My days consisted of playing with African friends, rounding up our chickens, helping my mom cook and bake, playing in the dirt and on our little playground. We went on a lot of walks, mostly to pick fruit called, "nya" or "zaba." I remember afternoons, we would take a rest during the hottest part of the day, then we would get up and mom would make popcorn (in a pan) and pop open a couple of cold cokes. This was always such a treat.

Since my mom is a nurse, people would walk for miles to come and be treated or get medicine. She could basically act as a doctor and prescribe and sell medications at an affordable cost to the patients. I saw some gross things. I helped her count out medications, mostly anti-malaria and put them into little bags. Mom would also teach the women basic hygiene for themselves and their babies and try to vaccinate as many as she could.

Dad was there to translate the Bible into the Bwamu language. It took them at least 3 or more years just to learn the language and develop an alphabet. It was a painstaking process that he worked on for years. He did a lot of traveling on his moped into the "bush" to little villages that had not heard the gospel. They would do evangelisms there and then move onto another village. Sometimes he was welcomed, sometimes not. He always had to get permission from the village chief. Churches would start, but they needed a pastor. Most of the people are uneducated, so who would teach? A Bible School was started to train up pastors among their own tribes. It was so neat to see that process.

So...Burkina is many things. I've just barely scratched the surface. It was a famine-raged and war-torn country in the 80's. I remember several coup d'etats. My dad experienced 17 or so during his lifetime as a missionary in West Africa. But that didn't change the people. Most of the people are the sweetest, most generous that you would ever meet. It's a place where you can focus on what really matters--relationships! I love that I got to experience Burkina Faso. Thanks for learning a little bit about me.