Just Send A Kid

Need more credit for your phone card?
just send a kid
Suddenly have guests but no sugar for the tea?
just send a kid
Want to talk to your counterpart but can't find him?
just send a kid

For a year and a half I didn't have cell phone service in village. Every time my mother would call, someone would pick up the phone and babble away in local language.
Hadjara? Hadjaraaaa? I want to speak to Hadjaraaa!? my mom would yell into the receiver in the mean time until the call-recipient finally hung up. She'd always wait and call back in 10 or 15 minutes because by that time they would have sent a kid.

During this same period, whenever someone wanted to find me for any reason - from asking me a question to informing me that the school inspector had come - they'd send a kid.

If anyone ever wants to give you something - like prepared food or freshly harvested crops - they invariably send it with a kid.

Water?
send a kid
Sand?
send a kid
Cigarettes? Hot coals? Machete?
send a kid

I was in a car in the States in January, explaining this system to my mother, when it occurred to me that at any given daytime moment in rural Burkina Faso there must be something like 20% of the child-teenage population running petty errands for adults.

Burkina Faso has one of the worst adult literacy rates in the world: about 12%. Out-of-school youth abound in small villages and so do men who drink (and purchase the materials for) tea more than once a day as well as women who buy bullion cubes one by one each time they cook a meal among other things. Everybody really does pay (or not pay) everything as they go. Potential errands are endless. So sure enough, when you look around, the to-and-fro flow of youth circulating on bikes; walking with small change; carrying plates, plastic bags, sticks, motorcycle parts, cultivating tools, animals, calabashes, babies, other small children, chickens, cakes, mangos, hay...

Just to have tea, for example, one needs the following supplies: tea leaves, sugar, water, one-two little teapots, a plate, one-three shot glasses, burning coals or wood, a fournier (where you put the burning coals or wood), mint - if available, peanuts - if one has the money and the list goes on if you consider such things as guests! One might need to send a kid to invite other relevant men to the tea party!

Women have plenty of kid-errands to orchestrate as well. Take this baby while I go away, fetch me water from the pump, carry this wedding-rice to my cousins’ across-town, go buy me some fried dough to feed my baby, go sell this fried dough I prepared (so I can buy something for my baby), bring Hadjara the plate she lent us yesterday or bring back this baby to its mother wherever she may be. It is not at all uncommon to see a child not even twice the height of an infant carrying such an infant on her back.

Just send a kid is something I have come to take completely for granted. I had to stop to think don't we do this in the States? When I get home and meet your 6 year old for the first time, you wouldn't mind if I sent him down the road to buy me a new chapstick, would you? Its not like I'm sending him for cigarettes...* oh wait. People can't do that chez nous. You couldn't even send your 15 year old for liquor or smokes. Would you have your 8 year old start the living-room fire on Christmas? Here the 1st-6th grade students supervise schoolyard bush fires where students collect and burn all the school courtyard rainy season growth and weeds. You wouldn't mind if I interrupted your 11 year old girl's homework time to have her prepare a simple meal for the family? I guess I can't. I guess if I want to speak to my neighbors down the road I can't pick up a child who I do not know on the street and ask him to deliver a verbal message or a written note. Of course a child in the States wouldn't refuse to do something, would he?

While I was home I visited a friend's third grade classroom. Her students were insatiably curious and it was great. Every littlest bit of information I provided was met with ten new questions. I felt like I couldn't talk fast enough to give them all the knowledge they wanted... Pictures and demonstrations helped. Yet when I got to the point where I described children's roles - their utter and non-negotiable submission - in Burkinabe society, the students were shocked into disbelief. You mean, a child has to do ANYTHING an adult tells them to do? Even if its not their parent? Even if they don't know the person? Even if they are busy doing something else? Even if they don't WANT to?

Yes. I explained that, in reality here, young people need to do anything anyone older tells them to do because that's just the way things work in Burkina Faso. I discussed with the students how Burkinabe children are expected to address adults. They should never look adults in the eyes when greeting them. They should never offer their hands to be shook. They should never even speak, actually, until spoken to. They should never offer their opinions and they may never ever refuse what they are told to do. Burkinabe students should address all teachers and minor authorities by approaching the adult, crossing their arms over their chests, putting their heads down, averting their eyes and mumbling preferably inaudible bonjours before shuffling away. The students were incredulous that some kids don't go to school; that many men have multiple wives; that chores can sometimes be so consuming so as to leave no time for play or even school; that children aren't paid for work; that in Burkinabe society, men rule.

These are things I've come to take for granted. Need anything? Just send a kid. So don't hold it against me if I come home and start bossing your little ones all around town. They'll listen, of course? I'm sure I'll be fine when re-entering the United States... I won't treat your boy like he's West African. But, if I tell him to do something, well of course, he'll never say no.

Will he?


*I don't smoke, fyi. I wanted to use this example though because I always see little kids running to buy men cigarettes.