The wife of the former German Ambassador writes about her time spent in Burkina Faso

I may not go as far as to say it was my favourite posting, but my  experience in Ouagadougou from August 2020 to July 2023 is something I would not miss for the world. This posting, our first really tough posting in our diplomatic career spanning 30 years, changed my personal attitudes to so many things and indeed to myself.

When we moved to Burkina Faso in August 2020 we moved into an empty house – empty in another sense too, because it was our first posting abroad without the children. I spent the first 6 – 8 weeks trying to work out where to go shopping. It was difficult because the country had closed down for three months on account of Covid and many goods were scarce, but soon the shelves started filling up again.

After the removal containers arrived at the end of November and we had furnished the house, I asked myself: What am I going to do with my spare time? The answer came quickly. I wanted to become involved in voluntary work. I visited one of the largest local NGOs, AMPO, set up by a German woman. They were very happy to hear from me. I was given the job of weighing and measuring undernourished infants. That’s easy, I thought because I had already raised four children myself, and it sounded like something worthwhile.

My heart was pounding next day when I drove to AMPO. I suddenly doubted my capabilities, thinking my reactive French might not be up to the task. I went into the room where I was supposed to work and was met by the questioning looks from 50 women with their sweet little children wondering what I was doing here. Many of the children immediately started crying. They had never seen a white woman before. Fortunately I was accompanied by a local Burkinabé woman. My concerns about my skills in French were completely unfounded, because the women and children spoke no French at all, but Moore, the language of the Mossi, the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso. Oh dear! My knowledge of Mooré was zero. A great incentive to learn Mooré! But I soon learned that  you can communicate quite well with looks and gestures. I wondered how I could gain the confidence of the children so that they would no longer be afraid of me. It took really a lot of time and patience. Six weeks later the children no longer burst into tears when they saw me and were looking forward to our visits. After they were measured and weighed the children were given a high-calory feed and the women received a large bowl of rice with a piece of meat – and I stood by, looking at their bright shining eyes.

Besides the large Clinic, AMPO also has a workshop for people with disabilities. When I saw this facility I was immediately struck by the energy of the ten disabled men working there. All of them had had polio and were confined to wheelchairs. What sort of work were they doing? AMPO taught them to weld and they were now constructing hand-crank operated wheelchairs for other people with disabilities. Up to 50 a month! They weld, they cut sheet metal, and bend tubes until they come up with a special type of wheelchair. The working atmosphere among the men was so positive that I decided to join them. I soon found out how best to help. I also learned to weld, but I never reached their level of precision. So I made myself useful in other ways. I drove with the worshop foreman to a scap metal yard in a very poor part of town, searching for a particular tool. When I got out of the car and pushed the wheelchair with the foreman in it to the scrap yard I felt that every eye in the neighbourhood was upon me. What is that white person doing here? And a woman at that, with a disabled man? I immediately fell in love with this grubby “lost place“. I bought about 20kg of scrap metal and then ? Back in the workshop I welded my first chair of used metal. The seat is the tank of an old motor bike, the back is made from the motor bike brakes, the legs are made from old bicycle forks. The AMPO founder was so thrilled that she placed a large order with the workshop for the AMPO shop in Berlin. For me there was no happier, more laid-back time than the time spent together with these men.

However, this easy, happy period came to an end in January 2022 with the first more or less bloodless military coup. For 5 days we were not allowed to leave the house. So how did I spend my time and avoid cabin fever? I took a canvas and acrylic paint and had a go at painting my first picture. That was fun! A few days later life returned to normal in Ouagadougou and I was able to go shopping at the market or supermarket just as I did before the coup. And then 9 months later came the second military coup. Once more this was relatively bloodless, but the hatred towards white people and the French in particular could be felt on the streets and at the markets. The French embassy was wrecked and the Institut Franҁais completely destroyed. How did I cope mentally with these military coups? First I thought they didn’t affect me at all. But after 3 years in Burkina Faso (we had even extended or posting by a year) when we were not allowed to leave the capital Ouagadougou for security reasons, the effect was considerable. Every time we heard a gunshot – mostly army exercises – my thoughts turned in the last few months to the next coups. It was not until we took up the next post in Manila that I realised what it means not to feel this tension. Here I can travel freely in my new host country and I know that if I hear a bang, it can only be from fireworks.

Had we not been posted to Burkina Faso (which translates as the land of the upright people), a really tough posting, I would never have had such positive exchanges with the local people. I would never have discovered my hidden talents. I would never have invested time in those hobbies I learned to appreciate so much there. In our street and on the markets I was well-known, people spoke to me because many of them got to know me through AMPO and I always tried to speak a few words of Mooré with them. To sum up our posting to Ouagadougou: the openness and sympathy you show in your dealings with other people is always rewarded 100%