Home » Burkina Faso » Welcome To Ottawa - Population 300

Guédyo was the village where Rocheline was born. It's also known as Ottawa - the explanation being (as far as I could understand it) that the village was founded by two separate groups of families (one from Soubré district, the other from Gagnoa), hence marriages are allowed between theses two groups who then become brothers-in-law, which in Bété is 'Ottowi', and so they changed this to Ottawa so that it would have the same name as the Canadian town. The Canadian ambassador had supposedly visited the village, filmed it, etc.

Welcome To Ottawa - Population 300

Ajcairns
2005-11-04 20:53:21

Displayed times (last time: )

ages at various stages e.g. to be allowed to attend the equivalent of primary 5 you would have to be aged between 8 and 11, and so a 12 year-old who had doubled a few times would have to change his or her birth-certificate so that he or she would 'legally' be 10 years old. This method of changing birth certificates is illegal, but is such a common practise that even the school teachers actively encourage it, and talk about it openly. For example a guy I knew in the village was 23 years old, but his papers showed him to be 18 (he had done this to be able to complete his secondary school education).

I was able to attend the end of year classement ceremony, which took place one morning in the courtyard in front of the school. The 8 or so classes lined up in rows of about 20 or so to a class, each child putting their hands on the shoulders of the child in front. It was fairly obvious to see the children that had repeated a few times, just by looking at the size differences of children in the same class. The head teacher first gave a speech about how children had to try harder, parents had to encourage and support their children and take more of an interest in their schooling, the results were overall pretty poor, with only about 50% of pupils advancing, etc. He also mentioned that the Burkina Faso parents had made a poor job of building a school kitchen, and that if it hadn't been built correctly by the time the school was about to start up again in September, then none of the Burkina Faso children would be allowed to attend classes.

He then started reading out the children who had done well enough to progress into the next class, starting with primary one and announcing the names in order of merit (best mark first). When a child heard his name, he came and took his mark-book from the head-teacher, and then went and stood to one side. After each class had been read out, the teacher paused so that the kids could go "Woooh, woooh, ...