REPORT OF ACTIVITIES:
 
CONSTRUCTION OF
PRIMARY SCHOOL WELL & LATRINE
FOR THE KWARE-MINGUEL
VILLAGE SCHOOL
SOROU DISTRICT
BURKINA FASO
WEST AFRICA

Kware Minguel is a village located in the district of Sourou in the northwest of Burkina Faso, about 120 miles northwest of the capitol Ouagadougou and about 30 miles from the border with Mali. The village has a population of about 3000, who are mostly of Samo ethnic background. Most of the villagers are farmers; the rest are shopkeepers, herders, and government employees. Like all small villages in Burkina Faso, Kware-Minguel lacks electricity and running water. There is one medical clinic and one primary school in the village.

The primary school was built with the assistance of a French NGO (nongovernmental organization) about 35 years ago. It is a school with six grades, but as the school has only three teachers to teach the students, only three grades are taught annually and new students are enrolled every two years.

One of the teachers, Bakary Koné, is also the director of the school.  He arrived in 2001 after teaching several years in the village of Kiembara, about 23 miles southwest of Kware-Minguel. A motivated and caring professional, Mr. Koné was appalled to see the school in disrepair and lacking basic facilities like latrines, windows, and doors.The school originally had wooden doors and windows, but these were soon devoured by termites.

He enlisted the help of his friend Geoffrey Brinker, a Peace Corps education volunteer who was living in Kiembara at the time and together they worked to prepare a budget for the purchase and installation of new metal windows and doors for the school. Mr. Brinker was able to secure funding for this windows and doors project through the generous donation by an elementary school in Humble, Texas, and this project was completed in satisfactory fashion in spring of 2002, supervised by Mr. Brinker.

After the completion of the windows/door project, Mr. Koné turned his attention to the need for school latrines for the students. The students had been going behind trees and bushes on the school grounds in order to relieve themselves. Also, the school lacked a nearby convenient water source for the school garden. Mr. Brinker and Mr. Koné prepared a preliminary budget for the construction of three latrines and a well, totaling 164,000 CFA ($270 US).

This budget was based on the then exchange rate of 606.5 cfa/1 US$.

In fall of 2002, Karen Reed was able to secure funding for the well and latrines based on this preliminary budget with the assistance of the American Catholic Union. I was asked to serve as co-administrator of the project since Geoffrey Brinker had returned to the United States that previous summer. At the tlme I was serving as a Peace Corps health development volunteer in Kiembara.

In February 2003, Ms. Reed and the ACU sent the money to Burkina Faso via a friend of mine who came to visit me from California.  Unfortunately,the exchange rate had fallen to 598 cfa/1 US$ by that point.

In March 2003,1 visited Kware-Minguel to meet with Mr.Koné to discuss to discuss the building of the well and latrines. We were forced to make changes in the original budget because of the reduced exchange rate and because the original budget underestimated costs and neglected others. We had to reduce the number of planned latrines from three to two, but by doing so we were able to add the cost of additional cement to line the latrine holes, thus ensuring a lengthier use of at least ten years. (The original latrine use estimate was four years.)

During the same visit, I visited the high school and took photos of the proposed well and latrines sites. I also toured the school garden where as a part of their school curriculum the schoolchildren planted vegetables such as tomatoes, cabbage, and okra. Lacking a school well, the children were forced to seek water from a distant village well, where they would often have to endure long lines with the other villagers who were also seeking water. Lastly, I met with the president of the A.P.E. (an association of the students' parents) and other local village officials.

In April 2003, Mr. Koné met me in Kiembara so that we could arrange the purchase and transport of materials unavailable in Kware-Minguel. Once again, we found out that we had made miscalculations, this time by underestimating the availability and price of cement. (There were shortages of cement in Burkina Faso because of the conflict in neighboring Ivory Coast.)

Luckily, we found a cheaper method for transporting the materials and also we found that we had overestimated the cost of iron bars so it pretty much all worked out in the end. I advanced half of the labor costs at this point to Mr. Koné so that he could hire the necessary laborers in Kware-Minguel to complete the project.

After the delivery of materials and the hiring of laborers, construction proceeded smoothly such that by the end of May, the project was complete. In early June I visited Kware-Minguel to see and take photos (attached) of the completed latrines and well. I also met with the local laborers and disbursed the payments still owed.

Overall, I was pleased to see that the project was completed successfully and to everyone's satisfaction.

S/E.K. Shang

Photos:

Mr. Bakary Koné, the School Director, wrote a letter of thanks:

Future Project

It is estimated that a simple but decent kitchen could be built for about US$1,000. Ms Reed and the ACU are looking into the possibility of raising money for this good cause.