bibir = santa claus

"Education, health and production”, such is the raison d’être of Bibir. On Tuesday October 2, many (but far from all!) Burkinese kids went back to school.

In the villages, this is no evidence: you have to walk distances to reach, classes are overcrowded, teachers are all but motivated and how would you manage to get the school necessities when you’re in a godforsaken village. That is why Bibir supports the children of 36 schools in the province of Yatenga. Almost 10 000 primary school children get a “kit scolaire”. This is a school bag with notebooks and pens. As the work to deliver them is gigantic, also the “production” unit (Heleen and her colleague) has been dispatched to hand out school bags for two weeks. A ceaseless Santa Claus feeling. On Saturday October 7, we were in the schools of Issigui and Tougzagué.

36 percent of the children go to school. Precious little, as (almost) all European children attend classes. Girls are even worse off. When a daughter gets married, she moves in with the family of her husband, so as parent you loose her working force. Then why sending her to school?

In Burkina Faso, the French system has been maintained: the first grade is CP1; then CP2. Third and fourth are CE1 and CE2. Fifth is CM1 and you end primary school in CM2. At the end of primary school, you have to make some kind of final test: the “certificat”. In a bush village the six years might be available, but one class contains an awful lot of pupils. Issigui’s CP1 counts 62. This is still ok; some villages have to squeeze more than one hundred pupils in one classroom. Teachers have to do miracles…

and they even got a nice soccer outfit…