the land that globalization forgot

coming from the "land of plenty" i am used to being able to find anything i want at any time of day. if i want fruits or vegetables that are out of season, my local grocery store will order them from a country that produces year round. if i want clothing designed in europe, someone will manufacture it in taiwan and then make it available to me at a store down the street. when i wanted to buy an ipod, someone in california designed it, then someone in china assembled it before i bought it in wisconsin. anything that i perhaps had trouble finding in the store was available within 4-6 days from sellers all over the world on ebay.

i studied this globilization phenomenon in college, and seeing it through my american lens, i naively thought that the term "global-ization" implies that it is a concept that is applicable to all parts of the world. living in burkina faso, however, has caused me to rethink this.

in my own small village, anything that people need, they make. they do not order food from other countries, or buy clothing and electronics from china in a store; they produce what they need, and, for the most part, if they cannot produce it, they do not have it.

although i have studied subsistence economies, it is so strange to be living in one. breakfast, lunch, and dinner come from the fields, whether that means millet, or vegetables, or even goats, depends on the time of year and on the rain. the neighboring village of youba has a small marché every few days and people can go there to get fruit, seasonally, and things like oil and salt and some very limited amounts of spices (my host family loads piment, an extremely spicy red powder, onto my food because it is one of the only spices available here). clothing also comes from these types of markets, mostly in big, bright, colorful patterned cloths called pagnes that are made into skirts and head wraps for women, and long pants-suit type outfits for men.

one might think that my village is a sort of extreme example because of its small size, but the volunteers staying in other bigger villages report similar experiences...the concept of globalization is not something that has really caught on in burkina faso.

however, as i am sitting in front of an hp computer, while celine dion plays from a radio in the background (groan), with a nokia cell phone in my pocket, in the middle of ouahigouya, i must admit that globalization is not entirely lost on burkina. it is, though, a much less prevalent force, meaning that there are certain things that i took entirely for granted in the states that ceased to exist once i stepped off of the plane.

this idea was reinforced even more on a recent trip to the capitol. some of the volunteers who have been here for over a year told us about a big store called "marina market" in the middle of the city that carries the most products for westerners in the entire country. they are often referred to as "white people stores" by locals. after being in village for a week, walking into this store was like disneyland. there were even other western-looking people, meaning that i was not the focus of attention, or yells of "nasarah!"...i just blended. i wandered down the aisles happily looking at all the european products, breathing a sigh of relief that there was at least one location in the country where i could find things to get me through the next two years.

after a few minutes, however, the american part of my brain that is used to the convenience of a global society kicked back in. as i looked through the soaps and shampoos, it hit me that this is the biggest store in burkina faso...and it has less selection than the teeny walgreens that i used to complain about on campus.

burkina's failure to globalize, (or perhaps, the failure of the rest of the world to globalize burkina) unfortunately, does not just add up to little inconveniences, like not having my favorite shampoo, but can also contribute to already existing problems.

in the health sector, for example, medical equipment is just simply not found here. (mom and dad, i know you can appreciate this reference) in villages, if someone breaks a bone, they are not going to get an x-ray, pregnant women have never even heard of ultrasounds, and the only heart monitoring device for a sick person at the CSPS is a family member sitting on the floor next to their bed.

this also, sadly, translates to something as simple as food. in a subsistence economy, when there is not enough rain, or when something runs out...that's it. last week, the host families of all the volunteers in my village stopped serving bread for a couple of days, and when someone asked about it, the response was, "c'est fini." although bread returned from being "fini" a few days later, it was a rude awakening to me that the village cannot find simple foods for a large part of the year, and unlike most societies, they cannot simply import what they are unable to produce.

from my experience, this failure to globalize is not due to burkina's disinterest in sharing in what is going on in the rest of the world. each time i bring out something from home, my host family is fascinated by it, and eager to learn more about the united states. my host brother marveled at my ipod, and even at my nalgene simply because it bears the label "made in usa." people on the streets, even in big cities, are so happy to see us, and talk to us just because we are from a different country.

the sad and cynical conclusion that must be drawn, then, is that burkina is interested in globalizing, and interested in the rest of the world, but the rest of the world is just not interested in burkina.

burkina is an amazingly beautiful country; its people deserve better than disinterest, and it deserves a place in the global economy. i hope that my cynical conclusion will eventually prove to be wrong.