It's important to consider, when doing community development, how incentives can train people to agree with certain ideas. For many generations, the general idea behind aiding developing countries has been to provide financial or material support. There are cars and minibuses, brought from Europe, but few mechanics because no one brought these skills. I can't go anywhere in Burkina Faso without someone asking me, "What did you bring me?" like my siblings and I would ask my dad when he would return from a business trip. I often see other people visiting my village or a nearby city in order to build a church or a kitchen at a health center or to donate books to a school. These people then talk about the importance of going to church or cooking baby food for malnourished babies or of kids reading. You won't find a single villager who will disagree with any of these imported values. I have seen evidence in my time here that suggests that the villagers agree with foreigners out of respect. They don't want to offend their benefactors.
Burkinabe people are certainly aware of their country's place in the global ranking of countries as far as development is concerned. Aside from a common misconception of Americans as millionaires all around, they see the disparity in resources, education and the detrimental effect of corruption. Everyone I talk with in village will rail about how necessary education is, and it has taken me over a year here to realize that they talk about the importance of education because they know I'm a teacher. It's a difficult subject, but it's necessary if Burkinabe and Americans really are serious about working together in development. Their values reflect ours when they have a free teacher (me) within earshot. When in the privacy of their own home, I don't doubt that they value the education of their boys; I do doubt that their opinion of the roles of women has changed much in the past 100 years.
A short time ago, I was in my house making lunch when a heard someone on my porch. In Burkina, if you go to visit someone, you clap three times upon entering their property and you take a seat on the porch and wait to be acknowledged. I often have students calling on me so I finished what I was doing and went outside to what I assumed would be a slick youngster asking for the answer to a math problem or to take him with me to America (jokingly of course). What I saw was a young girl, maybe 13 years old, with a notebook. It is early in the school year, so I don't know all of my 132 students by heart. I assumed she was one of my 7th graders and went about washing my tomatoes while asking her what she wanted. She mumbled responses and I realized her french wasn't good enough to be a 7th graders. It's difficult to guess a child grade by their age because 4th graders can vary from 10-15 and 7th graders can vary from 13-18. She told me she was a 4th grader and finally had my attention because I realized she wasn't my student, not even at my school.
Me: "Ok, what do you want?"
Her: "Where is your wife"
Here I explained that I don't have a wife. That it wouldn't be nice of me to leave my wife in America for 2 years while I went off to Africa. I gave my usual talk on how Americans don't usually marry before 20-22 and often wait till closer to 30. At this point, satisfied that she wouldn't be encroaching on any marriage obligations, she told me, "I was sent here to be your wife." I thought she misspoke because of her elementary school french. Nope, after several minutes of me trying to explain that she was too young to be my wife, she insisted, "Madame sent me and my father is in agreement." She was referring to a woman that she works for as a housekeeper, a woman that I know very well, who makes breakfast doughnuts for students and is married to an elementary school teacher. A woman who is better educated than the majority of women in my village, who is from a different part of the country. I thought, this can't be happening. I couldn't tell her that it isn't possible to give someone away like that because her french and my Jula aren't up to that standard. So I wrote in french "women aren't objects to give away" and told her to leave and to show that to her dad. I went back inside to take my pasta out and went back outside to find her still there, insisting that she was there to "help me." It took me a full 10 minutes and 3 languages to finally get her to leave, she was that serious.
With the help of my friend, whom I use for village misunderstandings, I talk to her husband who says it was all a joke. "We joke like that here." Well you also sweep things under the rug here. Then we talked with her the next day, the woman who sent the girl, and she says she had no idea. That maybe last year she mentioned it in passing and maybe the girl got the wrong idea. Ok, why are you and your husband giving different stories?
Women often joke with me about finding me a wife, because it's strange for a professional of my age to not be married here. I joke back, saying if they send Rihanna over then let's do it. Everyone loves Rihanna here. This woman actually did it though, with a very young teenager, who definitely didn't think it was a joke.
It's frustrating because this should be an excellent opportunity to talk about a cultural value that needs improving: women (especially children) shouldn't be given away. But I couldn't get that far because she refused to acknowledge that she even sent the girl. Even if we suspend our sense and assume that you really were joking, this girl was not in on the joke. She was prepared to be my wife unless she is an oscar level actress.
This refusal to acknowledge a mistake is very common. I have caught many cheaters on my tests. It's hard not to, when you are crowded into a 4 foot long desk with 2 other students, but they still know it's wrong. It doesn't matter how much evidence I put in a student's face, he or she will NEVER admit to cheating. I have shown kids indisputable proof that they copied off of each other, they will deny it until the day they die. Their classmates will acknowledge they cheated, but when one of those classmates is caught the next test, he will now deny everything he did. I can only laugh in these situations at how obviously they are lying.
So when you combine these two characteristics, the easily veiled social values and the refusal to acknowledge a mistake, you often find situations where education, and thus change, is impossible. Back to my marriage example, if the woman would just admit that she was in the wrong in sending that girl over, or even jokingly sending that girl over, then we can have a positive discussion on how the practice of treating women as bargaining chips is wrong in any culture that wants to develop. But we couldn't, because she would never acknowledge any wrong doing and would not discuss it further.
The idea of 14 year olds being available for marriage might not be that difficult to change, but the villagers won't even admit that it happens, and will swear up and down to your face that it's dead wrong. I've been to weddings where the future wife was a teenager being wed to a rich out-of-towner that she certainly didn't pick or even know before the wedding. You can't even begin to introduce the idea that a practice is wrong until you get the practitioner to acknowledge that it is practiced. I have only had success in this with children, and only a small percentage of them at that. When I look at these results, I wonder how anyone can hope to help at all by coming in for one week and building a building. After 14 months in my village I can confidently say that we don't need more churches, we don't even need more schools. We need more teachers. 14 year olds are being offered for marriage, wives are being beaten and children are being forgotten. We either invest long term in knowledge and abilities or we leave, because rewarding these values with our donations is positively reinforcing ideas that are detrimental to the majority of the population.
