Radio host Mariama Sawadogo has become a lifeline for many amid the pandemic in Burkina Faso and a role model for women and girls.
. Ouedraogo listens to all of Sawadogo’s shows and said she’d know little about the virus without them.
“The priority for the government is to convince the population, not to take some measures which will be very aggressive,” said Dr. Brice Bicaba, the government epidemiologist who leads Burkina Faso’s coronavirus response. Messages also weren’t always translated into local languages, a significant problem since most people don’t speak the country’s official language, French, regularly.
Health experts say governments must take the lead, but that community engagement serves as the bedrock of emergency responses. But the mother of three boys is accustomed to naysayers and skeptics. In 2007, she left her first husband despite a strong cultural aversion to divorce, in part because he wouldn’t let her work as an Islamic woman. She wanted to be financially independent so she went to night school and became an accountant.
That keeps her going through long days as she also takes care of her boys, prepares meals and endures long waits to see her husband. He sells grain in the country’s Sahel region; they see each other just once every two weeks. Families in Burkina Faso are grappling not just with COVID-19, but also with the country’s escalating violence and collapsing economy. Zenabou Sawadogo’s husband has been unable to work mining gold because jihadi fighting has cut access to sites, meaning he can’t earn a living and they can’t afford to send their 11-year-old daughter to school.