Achille

I'd like to introduce to you my friend Achille.

Achille and I are the same age and he was a good friend of mine at Sheltering Wings when I was there last year. We used to read together on Tuesdays and Fridays. He’d read the story outloud and we’d work together on tools for reading for comprehension.

He is super intelligent. If I used an English word in front of him, and he could pick it up and start using it too. He would also pick up English words randomly and come to me asking for definitions. He hasn’t started learning English in school yet but he already speaks English some and can write some too.

He loves to draw and spends a lot of time working on beautiful flowers. He’s a master at Sudoku. I would give up on a Sudoku puzzle that I’d spent hours trying to solve and he’d quietly erase my work only to solve it in a matter of minutes. Maybe he can help me improve my Sudoko this year (although I sincerely doubt it; it's just not my forte). Achille got a late start at school, but last year he was tied for first in his class. I haven’t heard how school is going this year but I have no doubt that come the end of the year he'll have completed primary school and will be moving on to greater things.

Some of my favorite memories of Achille are the mornings he would come in and play with the babies: he would cuddle them, feed them their lunch and chase the toddlers around the play area.

We had a team come to the orphanage last year to install a water tower and piping. Achille volunteered to help one of the guys on the team and spent many days working with him. They formed quite a bond and it was beautiful to see the way they communicated and worked together even when they didn’t share a common language. Achille was always willing to help out. If ever I needed someone to walk into town with me Achille was always willing to come along and when the situation called for it volunteered to translate from French to Mooré.

Achille came to visit us at the house a lot. I’d see his smiling face pop up in the doorway as he excitedly greeted us in english. He’d join Liz and I in our living room and we’d chat about school or upcoming soccer matches. Sometimes I’d be working on something and Achille would sit with me as I completed it. Most often we’d just sit and have one conversation drawn out by long periods of quiet. It was Achille, I think, that introduced me best to the cultural normalcy of silence: the fact that it’s okay to sit and not talk for long periods of time. I don’t know how much the silence says or doesn’t say, but being okay to just be in the quiet is strangely comforting. I grew to love the way in which the Burkinabé embrace silence as a part of conversation.

On one of his evening visits Achille told me an elaborate story about his visit to Canada (he’s never been here) that had me in near hysterics. Fortunately he described Canada as not as cold as everyone says it is (good on ya Achille!).