Monday, February 25, 2008

Water.

10:40 pm | Edit Post
It was thrilling to see clean water flowing again in my friend's village. On hearing of my visit the chief got the whole village together in order to greet me. We spoke for a while and they showed me what they had put in place to ensure that when the well needed repairs doing the next time the money would be their. It's quite an encouragement when folk take hold of your advice and run with it. I was then presented with four cockerels as a sign of their appreciations.
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Well, Well, Well

9:36 pm | Edit Post
Water, one of the basic essentials for life but often taken for grated. For most people coming from the UK the thought of rain doesn't fill one with excitement, in fact some may argue that the British Isles has too much of the stuff especially during the holiday period. Some even consider emigrating to warmer climates because of it. We, however, have come to appreciate its value in day to day living. In the north of Burkina it hasn't rained since mid September and we don't expect it to again until around mid June. In Djibo itself it isn't to hard to find clean drinking water, we ourselves are fortunate enough to have the liquid gold on tap, but out of the town is a different story all together. It's not that there are no wells in the surrounding villages, there are, though not in all, it's just that many of the existing wells are broken.


A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine came to visit and shared with me how his village now had no water supply. There were actually three deep wells in this community of about 1500 people but their final well broke the previous day leaving them with a five km walk to the nearest supply. Don't ask me why folk wait for the situation to get so desperate, it's a question I frequently ask, and never seem to receive a reasonable answer. Ho hum.

I agreed to help him on the condition that the village folk contributed some of the finance needed to get one of the wells pumping water again. One week later I went out to see how the work was going and to chat with some of the villagers about how they may put in place a system of putting aside funds each month for future repairs. The discussions seemed to go well and were met with a lot of nods of agreement at some of the ideas put forward. We will just have to see if they put any of the ideas into practice.



I head out there tomorrow to hopefully find a village with clean drinking water.

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Monday, February 04, 2008

Dentistry in West Africa.

8:46 pm | Edit Post

Now it's not that I generally avoid going to the dentist, in fact I like to think that I have become immune to any fear I may have once held to due to my frequent visits to "the chair" in my youth. The thought of a visit to the dentist in a West African country, however, seems to have revived that adolescent dread I once held, but when needs must one has to be the grown up and bite the bullet. And so, when my ten year old crown detached itself with the help of a piece of chewing gum kindly given to me by my ten year old son, off I went.

Now there is a dentist in the town where we live, and although he is meant to be very skilful I felt more comfortable heading off down to Ouaga to seek the counsel of previous missionaries who had gone before me. A few days later I found myself in that place once again where the light always shines like the morning sun and the instruments of the trade are left on display to stare at you with intent.

To cut a long story short I was very impressed with the dentist, a German lady married to a Burkinabe, as she explained to me that I would need to have a screw placed in the root of what was left of my molar. Her method of dentistry is a little different to what I was used to in the UK. I would like it to that of a German car, a Volkswagen lets say – no unnecessary frills but solid workmanship.

It was interesting that on the way out the Dental assistant (the lady with the suction pipe) offered me some counsel on the way out as to whether to use my old crown or get a new one made. Interesting.

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