Hawa’s Story

July 31st, 2009

All the SE volunteers are gathered under the hanger for another session. The hanger is one of the cooler and cleaner spots to gather for class. Unfortunately it usually has a bunch of mosquitoes hanging around, at all hours of the day. They often find a tasty meal in our sandal-clad feet. Bites on the feet here are one more common and more annoying places to be bit. After an hour or two under the hanger almost every stagier is scratching at least one bite, if not more.

Today our session covers a wide topic of things, from gender inequality to strategies to stop cheating. I doubt that we’ll cover it all in the short two hours we have for the session. We open with gender inequalities in education. Vincent puts up a poster of an average Saturday for an average girl and average boy. Activities for boys include waking up, washing, eating, walking around, eating, napping, visiting friends, eating, going places with friends. Activities for girls were starkly different: waking up, washing, cleaning the house, preparing breakfast, eating, washing dishes, washing clothes, preparing lunch, washing dishes, watching TV or napping, washing clothes, preparing dinner, sweeping the house, eating, washing dishes.

One of our LCFs (Language and Cultural Facilitators) takes the opportunity to tell her our story. Hawa is one of the few math and science teachers in Burkina Faso. She is one of the best teachers I have ever met here in Burkina. For example in her last class, the lowest score on the BAC (equivalent to the GED, but mandatory for high school graduation here) was a 15. Given that a score of 10 is passing, and that only 3% of students that start school pass the BAC, this is absolutely phenomenal. Her story, or all that I can remember of it (or understand of it, she told it in French), goes like this:

“Every day I had to get up at 4am to make breakfast for my family and brother, who was expected to do nothing. Some mornings when I was very tired I would ask him to help but he said that I was the girl and so I had to do it. We would catch the 5am bus to the city where I attended school.

When we returned in the evenings, I would try and study. My mother would scold me, saying, ‘Why are you reading those books? You need to clean the house, wash the cloths and make dinner’ and she would take away my books if I didn’t do so. The entire time my brother was out playing with his friends or sitting on the couch listening to his walkman. How is that just?

My mother never understood why I wanted to be a teacher. She thought a women’s place was in the home, washing, cooking and cleaning. She did not support me in my studies. It was only when I invited her to the ceremony which I was to get the award for teacher of the year was she proud of me. She said ‘I am sorry Hawa, I didn’t know.”

She finishes her story with a sad laugh; I think to stop any tears from running down her cheeks. I know that I certainly struggling to stop them from running down my own. Gender inequality is so engrained in this culture it is hard to know where to begin to tackle the problem. The good news is that it is getting better. And I am part of the solution. And that is something that I’m very proud of.