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By Tara Sharpe
L-R: Suzanne Brouillette, from the University of Nipissing, Gordon and Aïda Ouegraogo from the University of Ouagadougou presenting the outil visuel project in Koudougou.
UVic undergraduate student Heather Gordon had the best kind of gift to unwrap last December when she received notification of her acceptance for a six-week study seminar in Africa.
The World University Service of Canada (WUSC) offers the international seminar every year through Uniterra, a joint program of WUSC and the Centre for International Studies and Cooperation. Gordon had been selected with 19 other Canadian university students for this year’s event in two West African countries, Burkina Faso and Ghana, with the topic focused on barriers to basic education about HIV/AIDS.
The subject remains sadly topical. World AIDS Day took place on Dec. 1 with the plight of children in the spotlight. On Nov. 29, a new survey conducted by Ipsos Reid concluded Canadians show the greatest degree of empathy among the seven G8 countries toward those affected around the world.
WUSC is rooted in this level of compassion. Every year since the late 1940s, 20 Canadian university students have traveled overseas to partner with local university students and engage in collaborative research under the guidance of academic advisors from Canada and each host country. Early on, Canadian students were stationed in European countries devastated by World War II; since then, students have travelled to other continents including South America and Asia, with Africa being the chosen destination this last decade.
Before leaving Canada, each of the students had to raise at least $3,000 in support of their journeys and the intensive seminar. Gordon chose to do a sprint-distance triathlon (1-km swim, 20-km bike, 5-km run), collecting donations at $1 per kilometre. Thanks to additional contributions from various UVic departments, Gordon raised a total of $3,800 before setting off for Africa.
Gordon arrived in the landlocked country of Burkina Faso in early July. It is one of the world’s poorest nations, with an extremely high rate of HIV and AIDS infection, and WUSC’s work there is concentrated on the direct link between gender inequality and the spread of HIV. Education through direct discussion and visual presentations is WUSC’s primary tool in communicating the common risks of infection to residents living in the rural communities.
As a fourth-year education student, Gordon was already prepped to teach. She was partnered with Roxanne Kompaore, a psychology student at the university in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital, and both women were billeted to a local family’s house in a nearby town.
From there, alongside two other students, they visited the outlying rural communities and gathered the villagers into groups based on age and gender (allowing everyone to feel comfortable asking sensitive questions without embarrassment).
Gordon says, “In one particular community, there was a lot of apparent confusion initially. We couldn’t understand why, until we discovered two local people had just passed away only the night before, from AIDs.”
Burkina Faso’s official language is French, which Gordon speaks, but Kompaore did most of the talking in the Moré language of the region. The team used a large poster-size flip-chart booklet. Kompaore would pose prompting questions such as “Why do you think this woman is wearing gloves?” and the discussion would evolve to answers about blood tests before marriage, the use of condoms, a request for doctors to wear gloves during childbirth, et cetera.
Gordon assessed how well the booklet worked, and concluded it was the most versatile and immediate means within this context of initiating conversation. Before leaving Burkina Faso, she used the remaining $800 of her funding to print 20 new booklets including artwork she created herself.
Having returned to Canada, Gordon finds the contrasts almost too sharp. “With NGO work, it can be the donor who benefits the most,” she says. “Change is slow moving and there aren’t any clear answers for a challenging situation like this, but certainly I know we have far too much here in Canada and they have much too little in Burkina Faso. I was the one who got to meet them, to engage in a cultural exchange, but it is the families and the little children in Burkina Faso who are the real story.”
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