lawane visits

Before I went away I had a busy last week in Bogo. I have started these lawane visits. This is the tribal chief traditional structure that sits alongside the political infrastructure and crosses over. Many tribal chiefs or their sons (known as princes) are also councilors. There are 13 lawanes in the arrondisement of Bogo and I visited 6 in 2 days in blistering heat, me and the national volunteer on the back of a moto, and no roads – just scrubby little desert tracks for HOURS. I got mild sun stroke on Sunday and felt decidedly queasy when I got back. That could also be that I’d had to eat 3 dinners too.

 

Basically I am setting off, say in a south west direction, going to the furthest point and working my way back so we saw 3 on Sunday. The furthest out have little or no contact with Bogo ville. One guy told me (but you have to take some of this with a pinch of salt) that I was the first visitor in 40 years. All the men of the village come out to look at the nassara and have their say. You can see decades of inbreeding from the genetic mutations, facial disfigurements etc, but on a more positive note these lawanes are real people leaders and get them all laughing and give them all time to have their say. It’s ridiculous and crazy the importance they give my visit and at the same time very humbling. They pray at the end for blessings on my work and I pray too that I won’t be yet another person who comes to visit and they never hear from again. I am coming across these great printed development plan documents that they get given by one ONG or another, but nothing tangible comes out of it. Their problems are so basic and it seems incredible that there are such problems in the 21^st century – water, roads, agricultural equipment, school facilities, teachers, jobs for the young. Young people are exiting the villages in a mass migration, but they are not even sending money back because they have their own struggles for survival in the bigger cities they move to.