The day the flame of hope was rekindled from the sky in Burkina Faso
The United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) operated by the World Food Programme (WFP) unlocked new ways to deliver vital food assistance to populations in areas cut off from the rest of Burkina Faso.
Story by Esther Ouoba
Where do you see yourself in five years? Most of us had to answer this job interview question while demonstrating how enthusiastic we are about our plans and how determined we are to achieve our goals. Regardless of the many ways people answer this question, they all lead to one word: HOPE. Hope to see ourselves better off than we were a few years ago. Hope is what makes any human being overcome all the challenges they face in the present.
Despite its harsh climate, Burkina Faso was previously known as a country presenting suitable conditions for development activities. When spiralling violence perpetrated by non-state armed groups led to a progressive restriction of humanitarian access in the northern and eastern parts of the country, it experienced an unprecedented humanitarian crisis that required new ways to respond to the unusual and fast-growing needs.
Five years ago, Maimouna Ada, a widow in her fifties, was living an ordinary life in Mansila. Mansila is a small town in the northern part of Burkina Faso, in the Sahel region. This was until slow, but insidious changes occurred. Ada started feeling things were not as they used to be. At that time, Ada would meet regularly with her friends and acquaintances in front of their houses to speak about their lives and plans. These were also moments when they would discuss the most significant changes each of them had noticed. Over time, it became more difficult for Ada and her fellow villagers to access running water, electricity, and even firewood which they used to collect easily around the village, because of attacks perpetrated by some “bushmen” in the surrounding area. As if that was not enough, people from neighbouring villages started to come and settle in Mansila after their villages had been attacked.
Then, the “bushmen” came into Ada’s town. Their recurrent incursions resulted in the closure of the main market and people fearing to stand outside of their yards as they used to, just a few months ago. Soon, no one could enter Mansila and those living in the small town could no longer leave it for fear of crossing the path of the “bushmen”. Indeed, such displacements were at their own risk — including being kidnapped and the risk to step on an improvised explosive device.
For a moment, locals from Mansila and those who sought refuge there shared what they had with one another, but they eventually ran out of resources. In April 2021, the members of a humanitarian assessment mission witnessed the main market that was desperately empty, quiet, and odourless. Wooden tables used by women to sell vegetables, spices and other goods were overturned on top of each other and covered with a thin layer of dust. The doors of the shops around and inside the market were locked, reinforced with iron bars and padlocks.
According to Ada, people desperately needed food, water, and electricity — commodities most of us have easy access to and generally take for granted — and to regain the ability to travel in and out of their town. One of Ada’s acquaintances further explained in June that contrary to the previous year, people could no longer venture into their fields located a few kilometres away from the small town to grow crops.
Humanitarians had attempted to bring food commodities to Mansila by road, but these attempts had to be abandoned as accessing Mansila by road became more and more challenging security-wise. Hence, WFP explored alternative ways to deliver basic food commodities and nutritional products to the thousands of persons, internally displaced people and host populations, isolated in Mansila. If food could not be delivered by road, what about delivering it by air? The more the security crisis deepened, the greater and more urgent needs started to arise. To contribute to saving thousands of lives, WFP organized airborne operations via its United Nations Humanitarian Air Service helicopter to bring food to Ada, her family, and other people needing assistance in Mansila.
For Ada, this was more than she could expect. She had previously stated that challenges are what make people stronger. However, with all the pressure they had to endure for years, everyone in Mansila had reached their limit.
On the day Ada received her first food ration, a puzzled expression was on her face. It was a mix of hope and worry about what the future might hold for her and the other people living in Mansila. What Ada did not know, was that reaching her in Mansila had paved the way for WFP to supply by air, the other thousands of people suffering like her in enclaved areas, such as Tin-Akoff (Sahel region) and Madjoari (East region), with lifesaving food rations composed of cereals, pulses, oil, salt, and ready-to-use nutritional products.
In 2021, it was thanks to donors like the European Union, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, United nations Central Emergency Response Funds (UNCERF) and the United States of America that WFP in Burkina Faso was able to keep UNHAS operating to reach the persons the most in need.
