In her deep eyes, one just gets lost; there is a mixture of apparent joy on her face and an expression of elusive concern. She also looked shy. However after speaking to Juliette for awhile, she becomes confident enough to tell her story. It becomes clear that her recent success at the teacher’s training collage was the light at the end of the dark tunnel she has been in since her childhood. While telling us her story Juliette is at times in tears, then happy, even smiling before being moved to tears again.
“I was 7 years old, my younger brother was 5 and the smallest was 2 years old when our father died, he had been a prosperous immigrant farmer who grew cocoa and coffee in the neighboring country of the Ivory Coast. My brother and I were taken away from our mother and brought back to Burkina Faso to my father’s brother. Our mother was forced into a marriage with a relative of our father, under the threat that if she refused she would not receive her inheritance as my father’s lawful wife. Two years after that forced marriage, she died.
Our uncle, in whose care we had been placed, stole everything that belonged to our parents. He moved to the Ivory Coast and spent all the money, then came back and sold one of our father’s houses, spent all that money too, and went bankrupt. After he lost everything, his attitude towards us totally changed; he hated me in particular for reasons which I still can not understand. Then one day he asked me to leave his house and I was only saved by our church pastor who came home to beg him for pardon so that I remain in his house. I stopped going to school after the sixth grade in secondary school, despite the fact that I was brilliant in class, simply because there was no money to pay for my school fees. I was also doing some miscellaneous jobs, helping neighbors as maid, as assistant seller etc. in order to cater for the small needs of my brothers and myself.
Somebody from our church heard that I had dropped out of school, and knowing that I was brilliant in class decided to pay for my last year in the secondary school. But I had no courage to carry on with studies, because my younger brother had also started to manage on his own to pay for his school fees, offering small services to neighbors. The smallest one is sponsored by someone from our church, but I could not stand to see the middle one going out to work. In the meantime, I had decided to attend the Teachers training college, and therefore asked the person who wanted to pay for my school fees to divide the money into two shares for my brother and myself. Thus, my brother could go to school and not worry about school fees. I was going to use the other share to pay for the teacher’s training course. The person accepted, but the money was not sufficient to cover my training at the Teachers training college. Then came the news about Plan´s scholarship. I got it, and everything was solved for me. I think that Plan´s scholarship was just a gift from the God Almighty. One sunny day I had just decided to go the market. I can´t even tell you why I went to the market that day, but I just went, and met a friend I had not seen for sometime. She asked me if I had heard the news that Plan was granting scholarships to girls. I said no, and went back to look for more information. I applied, and got the scholarship.
Today, I feel so relieved to know that I am now getting out of this difficult situation and that I will also be able to help out my brothers. As a teacher, I will seek ways and means to help girls suffering in similar situations that I was in: because as the saying goes “who feels it knows it best”. Plan has helped me out and in my own way I will also follow in the steps of Plan to heal wounded souls just as I have been healed. There are simply not the words to thank Plan; I just feel so grateful for the opportunities they have given me.