If you stopped by the Green Living Center opening last Saturday you may haveseen Brian from Urban Earth Solutions out front molding some sculptures with cob – a mixture of earth and straw.  I got to talking to him and realized we need to work some earth building into our projects!  Not only is it the most local building product of them all, but earth has thermal mass qualities that can help prevent air conditioning.  I think cob would be a great way to build the benches in our plaza, and rammed earth may be the way to go to get the thermal mass we need on some walls in the Gallery.  At 12-14 inches thick, it has more potential in our tight sites than straw bale and adobe which tend to be thicker.

Plus it has an echo to what we are supporting in Burkina Faso!

Steve

The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso. Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust in Burkina Faso, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops. Our intent? To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

One of the biggest things that the directors of AVN stressed to us, before we embarked on this journey to see their work in Burkina Faso, was the importance of cultural sensitivity. And it’s funny, I mean, it’s something people our age in California (or British Columbia, where I grew up) probably take for granted. Of course we need to be sensitive culturally. We know that.

The funny part is how a thing that seems so obvious can actually be so difficult.

AVN really strives to work in African ways in Africa. Although the method of building first originated in Egypt, it is from the same continent as the countries they are introducing it into, and not only that, it validates the West African value for simplicity and community. Many masons working together with their hands and feet in earth can form a home, can form a business, can form a new market of opportunity. AVN stressed to us the need to keep from triggering jealousies in the community. The community is the bedrock of culture in West Africa, trumped only by the family.

But we still ran into little difficulties, here and there. It is of course a little crazy to journey in a country where you don’t speak the language. (I understand “grocery store French”, which is to say that I grew up in Western Canada, the non-French side of the country, where we don’t learn the language very well but still have everything translated on all the packages at the grocery store. If you need someone to read a menu in French, I’m your girl. If you need someone to hold a conversation with a French-speaking person, you might get embarrassed just watching me try.)

Even with a translator, things got confusing, especially at dinner tables where five different languages were being spoken.

So we had some fun moments. There was the time (in Minata’s village) when Jessie looked around and realized she had enough mints in her bag to offer one to each of the kids. They were stoked, and cleaned her out. She wasn’t expecting the swarm that came running from all different corners of the village after that, though, hoping for some of the same. She felt terrible as they stood there waiting hopefully, despite her efforts to let them know that she didn’t have any more. But she just didn’t know.

For me, the communication breakdown had its peak in Safane, the lovely village where we stayed the night after our journey to Zeikuy, Tcheriba and Oualou. It may have been that we were exhausted, but for some reason, nothing would come out right.

When we jumped out of the jeep, the hotel manager said something to each of us that sounded like a greeting, as we shook his hand. So I repeated it to him, thinking it meant something like hello. When everyone laughed, I realized that he was saying “welcome.” So thoughtful of me, to welcome him back.

The hotel and AVN headquarters in Safane is a building with many vaults, painted a refreshing shade of blue inside, and lovely and cool after a hot day. It is run by a kind man who had been let go from the church he worked for after thirty years of working there. The opportunity to run this little hotel in Safane rescued him from the predicament of being unemployed after steady work, with six kids to take care of.

We sat outside around a table, slumped a little after a long hot day of travel, and drank our Fantas in the dark. Seri asked whether we wanted to bathe after eating or before, and I started counting on my fingers. We had eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner that day so far, dinner not so long ago. “We are eating again?” I asked, and from the looks sent my way, I realized that I was being incredibly rude, complaining about an abundance of food. It is a high honor, to be fed well in Burkina Faso. No matter how not-hungry we were (we were very not-hungry) it wasn’t culturally sensitive to turn down hospitality.

It all started feeling overwhelming. The hotel manager asked someone to help Zalissa serve the food, and as no one else stood up to do it, I realized he was asking us. But how do we go about doing that? Is there a special way? Am I going to offend if I do? If I don’t? Rather than helping, it seemed like a good time to just cry. Which I did, overwhelmed and confused. I was welcoming people who were in their own home, questioning the hospitality that was being offered to us, and now being completely unhelpful. (I was also in the early stages of expecting another child, which I didn’t discover for many more weeks, and may explain the tears.)

Anyways, all this to say that cultural sensitivity is not easy. Maybe in your country it is more polite to not make your host get up to get you anything, but in another country, it is completely rude to serve yourself. You find yourself reaching for the courtesy of your own upbringing, because it is what you know. And this is where misunderstanding occurs.

For us, it made it that much more amazing to see the good that AVN is doing, in partnership with Burkinabe people. There are so many ways to blunder, and I believe that every bit of who they are is for West Africa.

It’s truly good.

One more story: that night, we all found spaces to sleep. Jessie and Cindy stayed in a room together, and I felt kind of bad having a whole big double bed to myself, so I asked if Zalissa, Secretary for AVN, wanted to share my room with me. She told me no, she was fine, understanding that I was being polite. But Minata overheard, and you may remember that Minata is a very strong woman. (VSW) She was convinced that I was lonely and afraid and needed people to stay with me.

That night, I had two roommates. Minata was bound and determined to keep me from being lonely. And seeing as she is a VSW and I was learning a little about the consideration of the country, I didn’t even protest.

The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso. Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust in Burkina Faso, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops. Our intent? To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

It’s been a long time since I wrote about our life-changing trip to Burkina Faso. Wow. A lot has happened, and I find myself with my family in Canada, rather than in Sacramento, getting ready to fly to Turkey within a matter of weeks, en route to our new life in India. Not only that, but we had some pretty major losses in the last few months. You know about our friend Jason passing away. I guess it makes sense that writing took a back burner for a minute there.

But I just don’t want to stop writing about what we experienced in West Africa and about the incroyable program that AVN has facilitated there. Also, Jason really was the heart and brilliance behind the trip that Jessie and Cindy and I took to Burkina Faso, so let’s keep writing about the difference people are making on a different continent. Here we go, after a long pause.

The last part of our trip that I wrote about was meeting Minata, one of AVN’s entrepreneurs. I wrote about how a woman came out dancing, when we arrived, how Minata exuded strength, and then, how, surprising us, she jumped in our car to journey with us for a while. This is what happened next.

We are headed to a village called Oualou. (Pronounced Wa-loo, like Waterloo without the “ter”) But being the travelers that we are, we are dying to look at a little local craftsmanship, so we stop to check out the hand-thrown pottery that Tcheriba is known for. A few ladies have their wares spread out by the side of the road, on sheets in the dust. There are rows and rows of beautiful thick brown pottery; dishes and ornaments and tea sets. Cindy and Jessie begin to look at one lady’s pottery, while I look at the neighboring display. It is hard to choose, knowing that they probably all need the business. I buy a tea set and a bunch of other things. (Not really considering that all of this is coming in the car with us all.)

However, we are in a hurry. We need to finish seeing the villages we are supposed to see, before heading to Safane to spend the night. So Séri (the director of AVN in Boromo, remember?) tells our translator that it is no problem, we will simply leave the pottery here, and when we come back through they will have it packed in a box for us. Thinking of other places I have traveled, where possibly the vendors would deny ever selling me anything if I came back to pick something up, my jaw drops a little. Jessie and Cindy and I look at each other. And we leave with the others.

(Later, when we drive back to pick the pottery up, it is pitch black outside. The women are standing and waiting for us with a box packed up with all our pottery and a large quantity of straw, to keep it safe.)

In Oualou a large house rises out of the brown earth, striking because it is covered in black and white rune-like writing. It is beautiful, a home with two earth vaults, and when Cindy asks Moctar about the writing and what it means, he shrugs and says, “The women do it.” We are not really enlightened about what the writing means, but it sure is lovely. The owner of the house is not here.

We take a little tour of the home, and once again I am struck by the simplicity of the furnishings. Actually, I should say, there are no furnishings, other than a sleeping mat on the floor beneath a rolled-up mosquito net. People in Burkina Faso have so little. The overall feeling in the house, though is calm and cool, at the end of a hot day. The earth roofs have kept this home from the attack of the brutal Sahel sun.

Zati was the entrepreneur who built this house, with his team of masons, and he asks me if I would like to take photos of the back of the building. While we are back there, I spot a large pile of the empty karité shells, the nut whose oil is used to waterproof these earth homes against the monsoon. Of course I have to take a photo.

We sit outside in the late afternoon sun, chatting and asking questions. The owner of the home comes back. He is a tall, striking man in Muslim garb. He and Zati sit on a rug and exchange greetings of blessing. They laugh and chat, and we hear a little about how this man loves his home (it is obvious, the only home in the village so carefully painted) until a third man approaches them. I notice with interest that the man is carrying a chicken behind his back. (!)

He says a few words, and then whips the chicken in front of him and presents it to Zati. It is a gift for Zati, the man who built the vault style home of this man. Jessie has heard since then (although we had a small inkling) of how large-hearted a gesture this is. To give a man a whole live chicken is an incredibly generous way to honor someone, since livestock is so valuable.

Zati laughs as he takes the chicken, and we all laugh and clap with him. I turn to Moctar and ask, “Will the chicken be coming with us now too?”

He laughs and nods. “Yes. The chicken will come with us now also.”  And now, after seeing another example of a man’s life changed by improved housing, we all hop back in the car… with the chicken.

Karim, AVN Mason

Levi already wrote about how we passed our first 10,000 hit mark, at the Do Some Good Now page.   (We are getting ready to launch the awesome new version of Do Some Good Now that Chinua is working on, so be watching the site.)

I just wanted to write a little again, about this thing of training masons.

With the money that we will now send to AVN, a young man will be taught skills that will shape the rest of his life.  He will learn the techniques used to create the vaulted roofs that will shelter many people.  In his small country, he will become an experienced artisan, someone who will be able to teach others.  He will have a regular income.  He will have the opportunity to become an entrepreneur, if he so chooses.  He may travel with other masons to Mali, or Côte D’Ivoire, to train masons and build houses there.

I met Karim, pictured above, while I was in Burkina Faso.  Like a lot of the other masons, he was a little shy about having his photo taken, but like the others, he laughed with delight when he saw the result on the LCD screen on the back of my camera.  I don’t know if Karim owns a single photograph of himself.  He may never have used a computer.  In a country as impoverished as Burkina Faso, Karim didn’t have too many prospects for his future before the opportunity to train as a mason with AVN came his way.

Karim works with mud to make the bricks that form the vaults.  He laughs with the other masons as they tease each other while they work.  He comes back to the kiosk at the end of the day for some water or a soda.   He knows what his tomorrow is.

I saw many young men on the side of the road, in Burkina Faso, trying to sell phone cards by thrusting them into our car windows frantically.  Able bodied young men, with no prospects.  I thoroughly love what the Association La Voûte Nubienne is doing, by taking men like these and training them, creating a whole new market for them to thrive in, taking unemployed people and giving them a trade.

I want to encourage you.  We have reached the goal to train one person.  Whoever that person is, he is very important, and his life will be transformed.  This is no small thing.

Now let’s do it again.  And again and again.  And again.

The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso.  Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust in Burkina Faso, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops.  Our intent?  To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

When we leave Zati’s village, he comes with us, climbing into the back of the 4×4 with Djeliba and Moctar. Looking at the three grown men folded into the back, I am glad again that we cut down on our luggage before we left.

After driving again for a while, we come to a village called Zeikuy. As we step out of the vehicle, Djeliba begins his song of arrival, and an older woman with a baby held in a cloth on her back comes out to dance. After a minute, needing to dance more freely, she takes the baby off and hands her to a friend.

As she finishes her dance, we all applaud, and she holds up her hand triumphantly, laughing.

We are here to meet Minata, another woman who lives in this village who is an entrepreneur for AVN, and as Moctar tells us, a very powerful woman. She has markings that have been carved into her skin a long time ago. They designate her tribe, and are very striking. Although the markings are outlawed now, we meet many older people who still have them, having received them as children. We shake hands with Minata briefly, and then don’t see her again as we walk the rest of the way into the village, to meet the chief. (We find out later that Minata jumped on a bicycle, to tell as many people as possible that there were visitors.)

We all shake hands with the chief, who is sitting under a shaded structure in a sort of courtyard in the village. Many people make a small curtsy, almost, like a slight knee bend, as they shake the chief’s hand, and Djeliba and the chief exchange customary greetings. The greetings are a sort of back and forth blessing, with few pauses, one person speaking and the other agreeing, almost on top of the first person’s words.

It is beautiful to us, ritual-starved people that we are. There really is something about rituals of blessing or honor like this. To know what is necessary, to fill in the right blanks, to make a small knee bend to honor an older man who looks out for the good of his village… these things are simple and lovely.

This village is so remote. And yet it is here that Zati came and saw his first VN method house, with the vaulted, airy roofs, and decided that he would be an entrepreneur. The house is the chief’s house, and he takes us on a brief tour. Even being the chief, he has very few possessions. And I mean, very few. Fewer than you might think of, when you think, “few.”

On the wall in the front room is a collection of photos, and Cindy points our a photo of Thomas standing with a few Burkina men, near the top, in a place of honor. The chief loves AVN and Thomas, and the home that AVN has made possible for him.

Minata joins us again as we sit in the shade together. She is comfortable and confident- a woman in charge. The incredible thing about Minata is just herself, who she is and what she is doing with her life, here, in this remote village, far from many things, as a woman with many grandchildren, as a woman. When Jessie asks her what it is that she likes about the VN method homes, she repeats herself often. “She likes that they last a long time,” Moctar, the translator, tells us. The work that a family needs to do, upgrading their homes and fixing the leaks, putting the roofs back on when a gusty storm blows the corrugated metal off, all this work is time spent that could be spent on something else. It is things like this that make the difference between a people group merely existing and a people group thriving and advancing.

Minata now is contracting VN method buildings, hiring and overseeing young masons as they form the vaults, brick by brick. She tells us that she has permits for six building in the next building season. Six more homes built by this one woman in remote Burkina Faso, six more buildings that will withstand rain and heat without needing to be rebuilt. As we get to know Minata over the next few days, I can imagine that she simply saw something she liked, something of value, and made up her mind to help it spread. She is a strong woman.

Because, of course, when we leave Zeikuy, Minata comes with us. And the beauty of the culture and of our traveling companions is that they don’t tell her, “There is no more room, we are already full.” Instead, they say, “Sure! Hop in.” And the ten of us drive away.

More Burkina Faso posts are coming soon!

In the meantime, don’t forget to hit the Do Some Good Now site. And there are some new photos on Flickr.

Check them out!

The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso. Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust in Burkina Faso, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops. Our intent? To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

In the morning, the jeep is out in the alley, waiting. Originally, because our backpacks aren’t that big, we just bring them out for the overnight trip. When we see how many people are ready to get into the car we wordlessly return to our rooms and re-emerge with a small grocery sized bag each. Of course I have the camera and computer, too.

Moctar, our translator, and Djeliba sit in the back. Cindy, Jessie, Zalissa and I sit in the middle, and the driver and Séri are in front. It is a bumpy, friendly, raucous ride. Everyone laughs and jokes, and sometimes Djeliba sings. Our skin and our eyelashes and hair slowly turn red, from the dust. Zalissa, beside me, takes out a bit of scarf and deftly wraps it around her head, in seconds making herself look like a queen.

I love feeling like a child, like this. At this moment, we have no idea where we are going. We don’t know when we will get there, what we will eat, when we next have to get gas. We are just along for the ride. And a fun one it is.

*

I said, in my previous post, that we were tourists. And in most aspects of the word, we were. We were touring the villages that had VN method buildings in them. But it slowly began to sink into all of us, how privileged we were, to be introduced to the people of the villages as friends of Séri, the co-founder of AVN. And to be with the Djeliba, a much respected guest, especially in these far out villages where he probably does not travel very often. It was not at all the normal tourist experience. It was the experience of a lifetime.

*

We drive on and on. The trees are covered with the red dust, just like we are. Zalissa is studying her French/English dictionary, which appears to be very old, the pages barely holding together. We leave the paved road and are tossed around like luggage. The trees are very close together and begin to reach in and slap us around a bit. They are not just trees, but thorn trees, with wicked long thorns, so we try to avoid them. It is far too hot to close the windows.

After a very long time, we reach a village. Jessie and Cindy and I look around blankly for a minute-we’ve been driving for so long-until Moctar says simply, “Get out.” It becomes a sort of tradition. “Get out.” We are only following instructions.

Djeliba begins to sing and play on the talking drum and we walk through small houses made of mud bricks to a larger house in the center. The song is a song of arrival, and becomes the announcement at the beginning of each visit. We are here to see Zati, one of the Voûte Nubienne entrepreneurs. As we approach his house, the kids gawk at us and the toddlers cry. We try not to look at them too much.

Chairs are rustled up in the shade, and we all sit. In the AVN program, becoming a mason is one step towards financial abundance for the people of Burkina Faso. Another is the possibility of becoming an entrepreneur in their own right–a builder contracting the homes to be built and hiring the masons to do so. Zati is one of these.

When Jessie asks him about the benefits of working with the Earth Roofs in the Sahel program, he says, simply, “My house is a house of poverty. By being an entrepreneur for AVN, I have been able to alleviate our poverty and provide for my children.”

Zati’s village, Tcheriba, is not close to any city center. The opportunity he has here, to actually build up a business and expand it, is not to be understated. It’s like he said, his house, his lineage, is one of poverty, and by building beautiful, strong homes for people who need them, he is putting an end to his poverty and that of the masons he hires. It is threefold. The builder, the masons, and the families who no longer need to live in deplorable conditions, and can enjoy their new earth home.

Zati invites us in, to see his home. We walk through, and I shoot a couple of photos of a pencil drawing of Zati, which is hanging on the wall. He sees me taking photographs of it and asks me to take a photo of the drawing of his late father. It is one of his treasured possessions, done by a traveling artist years ago, and he is worried about its safety. I will send him the photograph, so the drawing can be doubly safe.

Before we leave, Zati also asks us to take a photo of his blind, elderly mother. She is gently led out of the room that she is in, and as she stands, weak and wavering a little, she blesses us, our days and our travels. The blessing goes on for a long time, and the children sit and listen, Zati stands with love emanating from him, and Djeliba joins her occasionally, agreeing or emphasizing her words. We are honored in Zati’s house, no longer a house of poverty.

The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso. Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust in Burkina Faso, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops. Our intent? To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

It is on that first day in Boromo that we meet Djeliba. He rides up on a bicycle to say hello, and Laure introduces him to us. “He is the Djeliba,” she says. We shake our heads, a little blankly. “He is the communicator of history for the community. It is very important,” she adds.

Djeliba is a title and a name. There are many Djelibas, also called griots, and I believe that the Djeliba that we met was named Djeliba Lazarre, but since everyone called him simply Djeliba, I never was completely sure about this.

It is hard to find a suitable role in our world that would be close to the role of Djeliba. He is an oral historian, and remembers the stories and histories of the community in order to retell them. But he is more than that, he is the communicator, and he takes the role of translator, at times. When something needs to be said, Djeliba is the one who says it, and he is able to use all the poetic license that he chooses, in order to say it well. (And with large impressive gestures!)

He has a beautiful role as encourager, too. There were a few times that we sat around the table and Djeliba talked about the accomplishments of each person present. All the way from cooking the chicken, to taking the photographs, to being a good driver, to running AVN in Boromo. Every person’s contribution was significant, everyone was mentioned. It was one of the biggest inspirations about being there. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt as warm and included as when Djeliba gestured toward me and said, “Resel, Photograph!” (Resel is sort of how he said my name.) Or as happy and content as when Djeliba pointed out the hard work of each person.

Over and over again, people tell us that he is a very important person. That his responsibility is very big and he carries the history of the people. A completely unassuming and inclusive person, he is extremely respected.

On our first night, after eating dinner with the Youlou family, Djeliba sings for a long time. He sings along with his talking drum; welcoming songs and happy songs. We sit and listen, clapping and laughing under the flickering fluorescent lights until finally everyones’ eyes are heavy and it is time to head for bed.

The next morning in the first light, we leave on our overnight journey, ready to see as many villages as we possibly can. Djeliba chooses to come with us. At the time it seems great that he’s joining us, but we really have no idea what an amazing effect his presence will have on our travels.

The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso. Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust in Burkina Faso, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops. Our intent? To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

I am torn, now, because I have so many bits to write about and not enough space. I want to tell you all about the experience of being in Burkina Faso, the way the light was at every time of day, the sound of the peoples’ voices, the singing. But I also want to tell you about the houses and the vaults and the masons, the incredible sight of earth being transformed into shelter. Bear with me. I will try to share it all.

After Jessie and Cindy and I finish our lunch with the Youlou family, we set out on foot, on our first vault-scouting trip. Our guides are Francis, Secretary for AVN in Boromo, and Laure and Gaelle, the two French interns. Moctar, our translator from Mali, and Zalissa, Secretary for AVN in Ouagadougu, come with us. We make a happy and diverse party of people, wandering across dusty fields in areas unknown to most of us, except for Francis, who never wavers as he guides us.

We pass a woman drawing water out of a well, and children playing, and a little flock of goats who follow us for awhile. A woman riding with a bundle of sticks on a cart pulled by a donkey passes by swiftly, and smiles as she goes. The sun is hot and high. Our water is tepid. We chat with Moctar as we walk, and in his self-deprecating way he fills us in, bit by bit, on the landscape around us, on the problems of Africa, and on houses we see.

I make the mistake at one point, of asking how many West African dialects there are. “No dialects!” he says, “they are not dialects! They are languages. A dialect is something like the difference between the way English is spoken in America and Scotland. There are thousands of individual languages in Africa.”

Moctar himself speaks seven languages. Zalissa, Burkinabe born and raised, speaks three, and is learning English rapidly. I once again feel ignorant, with my one fluent language and bits and pieces of a few others. And when I say bits and pieces, I mean bits and pieces.

After walking for several hours and seeing different sites, we come upon a large home with a gated courtyard. Homes here appear to be built without any need for roads close by, and I look around and marvel at the way this house seems to be in the middle of a plain. It is beautiful. After walking through tiny clusters of homes with sheet metal roofs, this house seems tall and impressive. Jessie asks who it belongs to, and Moctar tells us that it is the home of a French man who is married to a Burkinabe woman.

The market for the AVN method homes is two-tiered, in a way. On one hand, there is a program and push to see impoverished people in small villages living in homes that are better suited to their needs and comfort. This is gaining speed, and we saw many of these modest homes in villages. On the other hand, there are sometimes wealthier people, or non-nationals who are looking for a way to build a hotel or restaurant, and in employing the AVN masons to craft the Voûte Nubienne buildings, they are gaining a better quality product as well as sowing directly into the Burkina economy. The materials are local and the labor is local, which is practically revolutionary anywhere in the world, these days.

There are two buildings in the courtyard. The smaller one is the home of the people who own this property, (they aren’t home at the moment, but we are welcomed anyways) and the larger will be a small hotel in the future. The buildings have the beautiful curved look of earth built homes, with triangular decorations along the top edges. We walk to the back and up a set of stairs to see a room on the small second floor.

Here is another attribute of the vault method roofs; the ability to build a second floor. When the brick buildings are made, they progress in the large, regular sized bricks up to a certain point. This work is fairly easy (as easy goes- have you ever made a building with your hands with brick and mortar? I congratulate you if you have) and a family could do it, if they were only able to afford the masons for the roof. Then the smaller, thinner bricks are used to form the vault, with a cable guide used to insure a precise arch. At this point, when everything is dry, buttresses can be built by raising the outer walls until they are level with the top of the vault and filling the space between with plain earth, providing a flat surface on which another story could be built. In this way, houses can be expanded in the future, if a family grows or simply desires more space. (If you want to read more about AVN construction methods, you can find their description here.)

As we wrap up our tour, we wander outside the gate and watch a mason at work. Moctar tells Cindy that he is pouring the Karité oil onto the mud in order to apply another water proof coating of mud to the walls of the building. Karité oil comes from the Karité tree (we know it as the Shea tree in the West) which bears a small almond-like fruit, and is used to make salves for the skin that we call Shea butter. The off water of this product is used by AVN masons, who mix it with mud to produce a water tight finish that does not crack in the rains and heat. We watch the mason for a while-he is sweet and patient when I want to film him working-as he lifts the heavy pail and pours this water on the mud. It is a soothing process, the circular motions, and I have the feeling that we are watching an artist at work with his medium-earth.

The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso. Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust in Burkina Faso, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops. Our intent? To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

Last time I wrote, we were barreling down the road in our 4×4, stirring up the dust. And we do reach our destination, just after midday.

But first we have a little adventure that involves the car stalling as we go over a speed bump and then not starting again. We all jump out, I admittedly thinking, fun! and hang around uselessly as Suri, the driver, pours water on the engine to try to cool it off. Or something. He does something with water.

We look around us. The sun is high in the sky and all around are the short trees and bushes and earth that make up the landscape all the way to the horizon. People ride by on bicycles. We are not in sight of any village, and it is absolutely still.

And then along come a few men with a donkey and a cart. The cart is filled with wood and the little strong donkey is diligently pulling it along. Suri calls to them, and we aren’t sure at first what he will ask, until the two younger men begin pushing the car. Zalissa helps as well, and we hover around uselessly again.

The car pop starts and we are on our way again.

Boromo. A town in the western half of Burkina Faso, it is home of the headquarters of Association La Voûte Nubienne in Burkina Faso. As we drive into town, our eyes try to get their fill. It looks like the other towns we have seen, but bigger. There are stands on the side of the road with merchants selling food and goods, and women wearing colorful clothing add splashes of reds, yellows, and blues to the earthy brown scene of dirt roads and earth brick buildings.

We turn down a couple of streets and pull up to the home of Séri Youlou, co-founder of AVN. Séri’s sister, Tené, is standing out front, and greets us with a welcoming smile. She is lovely, and not only is she Séri’s sister, but Thomas’ sister-in-law. Thomas is married to the sister of his longterm friend and business partner, Séri, and the ties between this family are strong. He was sad not to join us on this trip, staying in Paris with his wife who was about to have their second child, but sent his love to his extended family.

Soon we are in the midst of a bustling, laughing group of people. The French architects, Gaelle and Laure, are here, and different members of the Youlou family. Soon our translator joins us, and it’s a little like we’ve been wearing sunglasses in the dark and are now able to take them off. Moctar is from Mali, and generously took time to come and help us understand and be understood.

The compound of vaults that make up the AVN offices and the Youlou home are elegant and lovely. I shade my eyes and look up, noticing the detail of small triangular cutouts around the top edges of the buildings. When we put our bags inside, the rooms are cool, despite the heat outdoors. Directly across the street is a small hotel in the VN style.

The first thing we do is walk over to Séri’s courtyard to greet his father. By custom, visiting guests will greet the elder of the community, and we all shake his hand. We also meet Séri’s mother. I should mention that during our travels in Burkina Faso, the love and respect for the eldest of the community was something that always impressed and touched me. As a crowning touch during a visit in a village, we would be introduced to the elderly mother or father, with great pride and affection. It was always an honor.

We sit down in the shade to rest for a while, drinking Coke and Fanta which taste better than any normal soda. They are magically cold on a hot day. Moctar begins to read our itinerary, the one that Thomas put together so that we would not have any wasted time on our trip. “Five days is not enough” is something we heard over and over. But our ten day total journey was pretty much the limit for what we could spend away from our families, and so five days was going to have to cut it. Thomas wrinkled his brow and fit as many villages into our tour as he possibly could, telling us, “You can sleep afterwards.”

As Moctar translates the English document into Djoula, a common West African language, everyone’s eyebrows slowly go up. They look at us and smile. “This is a lot,” Moctar translates for Séri. “We will do it, but this is a lot.” Okay. Here we go.

But first, we will have lunch.

Oh, it is probably the best part of being in Burkina Faso, sitting around the table with the Youlou family, listening to the banter that we can’t always understand but still seems hilarious. It is such a paradox, really. This group of people, affluent by Burkina standards, would still be considered poor in America. Or at least, oppressed by their circumstances. Their well dries up for several months a year. Water is a precious resource here, and it is not piped in across thousands of miles. They simply have to walk farther, find a different well.

And yet, and yet. The kindest, happiest people I have ever met, every bit of their hardworking lives is met with humor and banter. A hard life is lightened by the joy of being together. And so these times around the table were so much more than eating. They symbolized a life of joy, to me. Generosity, as the best food was brought out for guests they had never met. Community, which alleviates poverty by bringing true wealth: the love of family.