Connected

As I write this images of the war in Ivory Coast invade my television screen: gunshot wounds, angry protests & locked houses. In Côte people are wondering where one president is, and are wondering if the other will gain power. 

Several days ago I asked a question I never expected an answer to. I wondered if the events in Burkina are connected to the protests in other countries. Clearly the events in Burkina have different roots (and what of the goals?), but perhaps some of the 'energy' has crossed borders. Slogans such as "Koudougou is Burkina's Eritrea" and "Burkina Will Have Its Egypt" (source) indicate that perhaps to some extent this is the case. And although far from encouraging, this makes sense; we live in an interconnected world. With so many Burkinabe living in Côte D'Ivoire it's no wonder that tensions from one country trickled across the border. It's only a little surprising to discover Compaoré graduated from Qadafi's 'World Revoluntionary Centre'. 

The good news is that in Burkina people report life has adapted some normalcy. Despite curfews, and gunfire in Ouagadougou (not every night, but many) the citizens have come to be okay with the new levels of tensions. The disheartening news today is that email and text messages circulating Burkina Faso are calling for the citizens to rise up against Compaoré and demand he leave office. 

This is an incredibly well done story (in English!) that I'd encourage you to read. It gives a lot of background on the riots in the 1990s and early 2000s (including the Norbert Zongo case). The difference between current protests and those are the ways in which military and police have been targeted (as seen in Yako). 

Here is the final paragraph of the article and a chilling conclusion: 

"And when one reads the various commentaries on the failure of the struggle in the wake of the Norbert Zongo affair and on developments in North Africa, one gets the feeling that the youth this time (and the less young who also came out spontaneously) is convinced that a formal organisation isn’t necessary to kick a leader out" (Pambazuka News, 2011). 

And with very little new information surfacing we do what we can. 

We wait, we pray.