World Map (Part II)

By the end of November, we had stopped drawing. I had gotten so little support from the teachers -- whom I had originally envisioned as partners on this project -- that I decided to schedule the painting of the map during the school vacation. In between working a volunteer training at the beginning of December and my plans for vacation at the end of the month. I had ten days in village to get this done.

The challenge would be to mobilize the community quickly and thoroughly enough to finish painting. I called the parents to the school to "correct" their children's work. There were still a lot of mistakes on the sketch and it was actually only about 80% done. I wanted them to get acquainted with the drawing instructions and confirm that they too could understand how the process worked. I wanted to create group leaders for the day(s) when we decided to paint. I wound up trying to meet with parents 3 or 4 times at the beginning of the week and actually succeeding once. We got some good work done and at least 5 parents demonstrated a solid understanding of the process. Of course one of these parents left town the next day and missed all the rest of the work...

I was leaving on Tuesday. It was Thursday and we hadn't starting painting yet. I was praying that my "group leaders" would show up the next afternoon as promised... but after spending almost 2 months sketching this map, the outlook was frankly not good that we'd finish painting in just a few days. On Thursday evening around 5pm, I took a jog out to "the hill" where I could get cell phone service. I wanted to check my messages. Just before heading home I decided to send a quick hello to my neighbor, David.

Hey David! What's up? You planning to head to Djibo this week...? He called immediately upon receiving my message. Christina, the American Ambassador is coming to mine and your village. -WHAT!? WHEN? I didn't hear about this... -The day after tomorrow. She's definitely stopping by my village but if you haven't heard anything then... I don't know. -She is coming to your place on Saturday? And mine too most likely? $#@!.

The next morning (Friday) I got up early to start making phone calls to confirm this. Nobody had any answers until I finally got a hold of the PC Burkina Country Director, himself. Doug, is it true? Is Ambassador Jackson coming to visit me tomorrow? -Yes. And I will be with her in a hour so I will call you then so you can talk directly. Finally I spoke to the Ambassador herself and explained that my community was about to finish a project that she, in fact, funded. I asked if she'd be willing to paint the US in a ceremony the next day and she agreed, of course.

At this point it was about 10:30am the day before the Ambassador's visit and I was the only one that knew about it. So I did something I don't normally do - I got on my bike and rode around village. The American Ambassador is coming! Yes, the number one American in Burkina Faso is coming to Belehede! Tomorrow! Come to the school tonight, we must organize a proper WELCOME... By painting HER map!!!

Hehe. So it was pure dumb luck. The Ambassador was coming and suddenly parents were utterly motivated to get to work. We started painting that night (Friday) and then all planned to get to the school first thing the next morning to wait for the Ambassador and in the mean time, paint. I got on my soap box too - The Ambassador is a WOMAN. And I am a WOMAN here to promote GIRLS' education. I do NOT want to see 200 men and 10 women at the ceremony tomorrow. Go home and tell your wives, daughters, sisters and girls to COME OUT tomorrow morning!

Like I said, I was soo lucky... Probably 50 people wound up cycling through as painters while I shouted out orders naming countries and dictating what color went where. Women definitely showed up in mass and all in all we probably had around 200 spectators while we worked and waited. However, one notably cool thing happened during this time but I'll give a little bit of background info first...

The president of the Committee for Village Development had been helping a lot since the evening before (see picture). In and of itself this was nice because he is an important figure in the village. But I was feeling a bit of reservation about the fact that he and two or three other men had painted so much when I had been hoping to incorporate more women and girls. The men here are more confident and practiced at advocating for themselves. When the president finished painting one country he immediately demanded my attention and made sure he got another assignment right away. The women, on the other hand, needed to be pushed to paint. Even when they were eager for a new country assignment, they would generally wait to be noticed rather than push to be heard.

All in all I was grateful for the eager enthusiasm of the president and a handful of other men but had felt some regret about the women's relative reservation. By Saturday morning, however, I had so much on my plate that I couldn't worry about it anymore. So I didn't. But here is the really cool thing: after getting started that morning, when we really got into it and started to draw the crowd... the president took charge of the situation. He was just as aggressive as the night before if not more so in demanding colors and countries to go with them... But I realized that he had stopped painting himself. He had created a line -- a constantly renewing line of woman who had not had an opportunity to paint. Bring me women! Who needs to paint? And every order I gave him went directly to them, translated to local language.

The Ambassador showed up with her husband. We made short speeches - myself, the parents associations' presidents, two village reps and the Ambassador herself. She painted the US. She painted her home state of Wyoming and invited me to paint New Jersey.* The villagers offered her "memories" of Belehede which were fresh with wet paint. Ambassador Jackson, be careful-with-that-calabash-itsgotWETpaint!! Phew.

In the end we finished almost all of it that day. What was left a few people worked on over the next two days (Sunday and Monday) and my counterpart even did some touching up while I was away on Christmas vacation. All that remained to do when I left was label the countries, paint Burkina and add symbols for Peace Corps and Belehede. Also we planned to build a hangar to protect it from sun and rain. We tentatively scheduled all this for the end of the school year because finally I had earned teachers' support. They complemented the map. They called it good work. They thanked me for bringing the American Ambassador to visit. For the first time since I met him, the new school director addressed me by my local name, Hadjara. He had laughed the first time I told him the name adding, oh no no that does not stick.

Following the big day the director and other teachers got together to write a request for supplies from the Embassy. They came up with an ambitious and impressive request for six major things: solar panels for the school to light the classrooms at night and hold study halls; a computer (plus generator) for the school to keep better, more complete records; sound equipment to do theater and awareness-raising meetings on the importance of girls' education; sports equipment including a volleyball net and balls to teach girls volleyball in school; books in French to start a school library and a partnership with an American school. Following this request was the first time the school director spoke to me with respect adding, we are counting on you.

So a few days after the map was essentially done I had a new challenge in my hands... how to raise approximately 1,000,000 cfa ($2,000 US).

To be continued...


*So this map includes all the countries of the world plus Wyoming, New Jersey and Belehede.