The rains mostly ended in August and severe hunger is forecast for this year.
Less than 40% of the usual crops have been harvested which means that there is food for about 3 to 4 months. People who may usually eat once a day will probably now eat every two days.. for awhile.. and then?
The big question for them is… should they eat the absolute minimum now and save their food resources for the next rainy season when their full energies will be required for planting and then for harvesting. Maybe this makes sense but it must require an unbelievable fortitude to actually carry out.

So far the government has promised to reduce duties on imported rice…but the merchants usually profit from this while the population gets little benefit..

It is said that this is the worst drought since 1973..

This has created a high level of tension among the people in the villages where we work.

The first manifestation of this was at the festival SIGUINOA (THE MEETING OF TWO SEASONS), the 3 day harvest festival which is a combination of spiritual animist rites together with a sort of carnival celebration with meat cooked over huge fires, lots of dolo, the local millet beer, a few knock knacks and lengths of cloth for sale and lots of loud music and dancing. This year the secular side was much diminished in spirit because of the poor harvest…
And then during the evening one young man stabbed another to death…No one knows exactly why.. neither of them was from the village and their rapport with the village is unknown… It was at first thought to have been a drunken encounter.
Now it is thought to have been an augury for the succeeding events…

True or untrue… what has unrolled in the village in the last 2 weeks is without precedent…

A villager, uncle of Alexandre who is a member of our NGO, is obviously quite a wealthy man.. as he had 30 cows- He took his livestock to eat the millet from a field of another villager who he thought would be absent. However the villager who owned the field discovered the man and his animals in his field and in a fit of rage and indignation took up his axe and killed his neighbour who had brought the cows to his field .
He was taken to the nearest gendamerie (police station)and kept there.
The Chef de la Terre (le BOBO), the animist spiritual leader and his 5 patriarches performed many ceremonies and then met with le Chef du Village and other village dignitaries to decide what could be done to calm the entire village and to see real justice done.
It was decided - with the gendarmerie - to let the man who had committed the murder under such extreme provocation to quietly disappear to the Cote d’Ivoire. This man’s family was informed but not the murdered man’s family.
It seems like a just decision..
But while he was still in prison, 5 men of his family poisoned all the murdered man’s livestock. Veterinarians were called in and it was discovered that poisonous insects had been placed in their food. Five men were held to be accomplices. The man who everyone thought had done it escaped. The others were given five days to find him.

The Bobo and his patriarches danced and sacrificed and asked the ancestors for guidance.

The man who had killed left the gendarmerie and was taken to le Cote d’Ivoire where he like most Burkinabé have family connections..

Almost two days after his escape, the man responsible for the poisoning was found to have hanged himself in a village 30 miles away.

The Bobo and his patriarches dance again, asking once again for advice from the ancestors.

And the ancestors have answered… There must be sacrifices: a black bull, a black sheep and a black chicken must be ritually killed and ceremonies enacted and until then the village cannot return to peace.
The entire village must contribute to buying these animals.. difficult to do in a normal year. How much more in this year of drought ?… So far the necessary money has not been found.. and now every villager living elsewhere has been asked to contribute. Before this is done.. there can be no peace..

I have been so impressed by the practical decisions taken by the village elders along with the gendarmerie…

The traditional spiritual part takes on a primary roll in reconciliation as it has done through out memory and history.

And the cattle that have been killed… no one will talk about that until the ceremonies are complete…

But I think this will only be the beginning of a year which will try the population in many ways and which will bring out many unexpected strengths and weaknesses apart from the inevitable and awful suffering.

Already in another of our villages a man with three wives and 15 children has hung himself from a tree in his field.

And I have read that no one in the world must go hungry.. that there is food for everyone.. It is a matter of will and economics and distribution…and power.

FITIL has thought that the best way to help the villagers at this time would be to supply school lunches for all the children as their usual crops of millet and beans have not grown.
This decision has been met with overwhelming relief of the parents and of the entire population as feeding the children is one of everyone's primary concerns.
In terms of SCHOOL LUNCHES..
Up until now as you know ..the parents have become totally self sufficient, growing, harvesting and organizing the school lunches

During a discussion with local population,
one women joked after that the mills were great.. but there was nothing to grind in them this year..

When we visited one of them we saw a very large bowl of white millet.....all the other bowls were of the same size but filled with something in varying shades of gray. This year because there is so little grain they are also grinding up the residue that they usually throw away.. so they will have something to fill themselves up with..Obviously the varying shades correspond with the amounts of residue which are of no nutritional value.

The women of Sakouli have come up with a good suggestion...or rather request...
That we help feed the pregnant women who are in danger of severe malnutrition along with their unborn babies..
as well as old people and pre school children .

Fitil is doing this in all of the villages.

Text by Bettie Petith