«Anyway, guys, life is good. Indeed, beautiful.” It’s well past midnight, over a beer and under the stars on an evening that isn’t too hot for Burkina Faso. Ouagadougou, the capital, which everyone here calls Ouagà, is asleep. AND Marco Alban he’s in a budgetary mood, as sometimes happens over a beer after midnight. That “anyway” refers to what he said just before, to the many problems and questions that being a aid worker entails in a poor West African country, which in the last four years has seen the end of a regime led for 27 years by the same president, Blaise Compaoré; experienced an attempted coup d’état; suffered an attack – the first in the country’s history – by Islamic terrorists who entered Burkina Faso from Northern Mali.
Our bar is a few meters from the hotel where the four murderers emerged from: in a few minutes, on January 15th, they committed a massacre. The next day, Christians and Muslims, imams and priests were all in front of that hotel placing candles and saying that the attack was not against Westerners, but against all Burkinabè. «This has to do with what we are doing here», comments Marco. «Burkina Faso means “Land of men of integrity”. Here we have never known religious intolerance, despite the population being 60 percent Muslim and 40 percent Christian. And we have never had problems with ethnic clashes or civil wars.”
This is the country of Thomas Sankara, the “visionary” president who already in the 1980s spoke of equal opportunities, environmental protection and the fight against poverty. He is the one who changed the name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso. He governed for only four years, from 1984 to 1987, then he was assassinated. Here everyone is convinced that the instigators were Westerners, against whom he thundered to denounce the neocolonialism that has long crushed the country into poverty, and the killers were the men of his friend, and later successor, Compaoré. «Sankara is still revered as a symbol», adds Marco. “And that also has to do with what we do here.”
Marco Alban is the Volunteer of the year, in the award announced by Focsiv (the Federation of Christian volunteering organisations). In 2016 the recognition (which as always is given on the occasion of World Volunteering Day, this year on 3 December) favored the themes of Pope Francis’ Laudato si’, that is, the environment and the protection of Creation. All questions which are daily bread for Marco Alban and the Lvia team. But not only that. The Award, by unanimously choosing Marco and the Cuneo NGO, also wanted to underline another aspect: it takes a long time to create development, it takes a style of cooperation that takes root and learns to deeply understand the realities in which it operates, it takes a style of intervention that sees in the so-called beneficiaries not simply people to be helped but subjects and collaborators with whom to build the future.
Famiglia Cristiana, together with Tv2000, went to see the projects and meet Marco and the Lvia team. While the off-road vehicle crosses a stretch of savannah to take us to Ziniaré – 40 km from the capital – where the NGO manages some projects, Marco tells us. Lvia (which turns 50 this year) has been operating in Burkina for 43 years, one of the historical presences of the Cuneo aid workers, the third country after Kenya and Senegal. Forty-three is also the age of Marco, from Turin, in West Africa since 1999: five years in Senegal, almost four in Mali, then in Burkina Faso, since 2007. Again for the Cuneo NGO. Almost half of his life, therefore, was spent as a aid worker. Over half as a volunteer, given that before leaving he began working in Don Ciotti’s Gruppo Abele, when he was not even twenty years old. “But in a way, I started volunteering when I was six,” he adds. «During Religion class, Don Giuseppe Riva, the founder of the Cisv, showed us photos of his travels in Burundi. I still have an image imprinted in my eyes: poor wooden desks, a multitude of children, the classic African classroom. That photo and many other small seeds then bore fruit: at 18 I was already firmly determined to leave with the International Civil Service.”
In Ziniaré, under a burning sun (it’s around 30 degrees, in the Burkina’s “winter”, for nine months of the year daytime temperatures range from 40 to 50 degrees), we see the agricultural cooperative. A beautiful example of cooperation taking root, because it was born on the long wave of a Lvia project. «Once it’s concluded», he explains Marcel Boudàat the time one of the NGO’s local trainers, «in 2001 we decided to join together as a cooperative. There were 350 of us who started, today we have 7,000 members.”
And he, Boudà, is its president. Sorghum, karkadè, niebè (a very nutritious local bean) are produced, but in the last ten years also tomato puree, of excellent quality, which is purchased from the best restaurants in Ouagadougou, processed by a women’s cooperative. And now it is repeated with soybeans, again with the support of Lvia. To give us an example of the results they let us taste some fragrant soy buns, freshly baked. «Our constant idea is that we only have to try to give an answer to the desires and dreams of the people for whom we are here», explains Marco. «If a village dreams of having water you have to help it to have water. We only have to contribute to their path, but their path remains. And it is their dream that you are trying to realize together.” «It was also like this with the plastic recycling project», he continues. «One day the mayor of Ouagà called me and said: “My city has cancer. Help me cure it”. He was referring to the plastic thrown everywhere. With that intervention we reduced pollution, created jobs, triggered a positive supply chain that manufactures recycled plastic products. After three years we handed it back to the Municipality, which now carries it forward independently.”
The last trip is to Koudougou, 100 km from the capital, where the Piedmontese NGO fights child malnutrition, a recurring problem in Burkina Faso, especially after the 2012 famine. «Even in this case», explains Alban, «we don’t just look at today’s emergency, otherwise it would recur indefinitely. Together with Medicus Mundi Italia we carry out two interventions: one for treatment, the other for prevention. We treat children suffering from acute malnutrition, but at the same time the “1,000 days” project is underway, which follows mothers from conception until the children are two years old, that is, the entire most critical period and in which there is the greatest infant mortality.”
At the end of the journey we ask him: what meaning do you give to this prize, Marco? «The recognition is for the entire team working in Burkina. The expatriates Giorgia, Chiara, Cristina (Volunteer of the year 2008, ed.) and the locals, Jean Paul, Clemence, Joachim, Casimir, Sylvie and all the others. Second, it is important to say that we need to go back to investing in people’s motivation. You can’t work for an NGO without a deep drive. The future of cooperation depends on this, not on the number of cooperators’ master’s degrees.” Marco also explains his choice: «I’ve always thought that you can be a doctor, a bricklayer, a teacher… but if you do it for others, the work has added value. I chose international volunteering and Africa. I wanted to do something simple for others.” Why is it better to do it “for others”? «Let’s put it this way: it’s worse for those who don’t make my choice. And in fact, here, life is beautiful.”
