I Don’t Even Know Their Names

Dramane left his family when he was only a child. His family’s position within its community was weakened by his departure. Little by little, Dramane is reviving his ties with the past and his family is re-establishing a place in the village.

Every Wednesday over several months, with Yacouba, a Burkanibé member of the ATD Fourth World Volunteer Corps, we would meet with Dramane, a 13 year old boy living in the streets of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. He was not only participating in the ‘Library Under the Streetlights’ project, he began to respond to the friendship we had offered. He often came to see us at the “Courtyard of 100 Trades”, a place where for over 30 years the isolated children, youngsters and adults came to learn, share their knowledge, cultivate their strength and hope that they could overcome their poverty. The start of a new phase in his life had arrived for Dramane.

So we invited him to participate in a masonry workshop being held at the Courtyard. He wouldn’t earn a lot of money, but he would have the opportunity to follow something through with others, something he would be proud of. Together with a group of youngsters, we laughed, sweated, and encouraged each other and finally managed to straighten the mud walls of one of the Courtyard buildings. “I’m a builder, just like my father”, Dramane told us proudly. We had become true friends!

In Burkina Faso we have a proverb which says, ‘One cannot be someone’s friend without also knowing his family’. When discussing our experiences during this workshop and our friendship together, we told Dramane that we would like to meet his family in order to present to them the workshop of which he was so proud. Dramane confided in us his wish to learn to sew. Shortly after, he accepted to join a training centre where he began to study tailoring.

At the same time, Yacouba and I began visiting his family on a regular basis in a region some distance from Ouagadougou. Each visit provided the opportunity to learn about each other, to show photos of Dramane in his training centre and above all to get advice about Dramane and his future. After more than a year and several visits, Dramane’s father explained that he lived away from the village with his family as he had been held responsible for Dramane’s departure. He was suspected of selling him, and many people in the village still doubted that Dramane was alive.

Dramane, for his part, hadn’t been able to find his place within the group of children at the centre. He fought and then ran away to hide his shame. We proposed that he come with us to meet his family. He was quick to accept, and was full of smiles.

After many years of separation, an intense and emotional event took place when Dramane returned to his family.

He discovered his little brother and sister. Yacouba and I fully understood that returning to one’s family does not mean that you immediately regain your position that you once had. But nevertheless a path opens….. We took the opportunity presented by this short visit to walk around the village, to greet the village leader, and Dramane’s uncles and aunts. They could see that Dramane was really there! On the way back home, Dramane confided, “My aunts call me by my first name, and I don’t even know their names….”

During the next rainy season, Dramane returned to the village and helped his family to cultivate crops. During the dry season, he left for Ouagadougou, but as soon as the rains started, he went back home again to support his family. Following his father’s advice, one year he went to Mali to work with an uncle who had a small business. Dramane is 17 now. He is preparing to get married and to start his own family in his village.

Thanks to some support, then, Dramane had been successful in restoring his and his family’s ties with their own village.

By Guillaume Charvon