In the Burkinabé “bush”, with Sayouba Traoré
Audio 03:46
Sayouba Traoré.
RFI / Pierre René-Worms
By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow
8 mins
Journalist at RFI, our colleague Sayouba Traoré is also a writer.
He is a talented writer, as evidenced by his rich work, composed of novels, collections of short stories, poems.
Winner of the RFI / ACCT short story competition in 1992, he drew attention to his writing, both ironic and evocative, which combines lucidity and the beauty of a simple story.
His novels tell the evolution of his country, Burkina Faso, featuring strong characters who face with humanity and courage the upheavals of an often brutal history made up of aggressions and dispossessions.
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The whole village of Kalakong is in turmoil after the disappearance of their old chief Koutoukana. Tradition requires that 200 men and women of the clan be put to death on this occasion in order to provide the deceased with a funeral suite commensurate with his rank. But human sacrifices have been prohibited since the arrival of the West. The traditional chiefs of the village crowd into the office of the district commander, hoping to make him listen to reason. But nothing helps. Not knowing how to get out of this hallucinating affair, the commander promises to refer it to Paris.
"Hello, Mr. Minister
".
Heads
is the title of the short story. Its author Sayouba Traoré is hardly unknown to Radio France Internationale listeners. His weekly column
Le coq chante
is very popular. But world radio listeners may not know that the man is also an accomplished writer. Novelist, poet and short story writer, he has a dozen titles to his credit. He became known by winning the RFI short story competition in 1992, before moving on to the novel, on the advice of his mentor, the Haitian writer Jean Métellus.
Sayouba Traoré's first novel,
Loin de mon village
, c'est la brousse, published in 2005, is a Roger Martin du Gard-style novel, which tells the story of a family over three generations in Haute-Savoie. Volta (old name of Burkina Faso), against a backdrop of colonization, independence and rural exodus. Before sending the manuscript to a publisher, the writer remembers having kept it under his elbow for a long time for fear of being refused.
Sayouba Traoré's fiction is today rich in 4 titles.
Their action takes place almost systematically in the deep country, with protagonists confronted with the forces of history.
His first novel,
Loin de mon village
,
c'est la brousse
, is emblematic of the author's rebellious approach.
The novel tells of how colonization alienated lands and minds.
Sayouba Traoré is an angry man.
If, in his eyes, colonization constitutes the original evil from which Africa suffers, his critical narrative does not spare the shortcomings of Burkinabé society which are the weight of tradition, the corruption of the powerful, or the marginalization of women. which is at the heart of his new novel,
Pougpaala, a woman's life
, awaiting publication.
Sayouba Traoré's novels are indictments, nourished by the quiet strength of a controlled, realistic and often poetic writing.
There is Chinua Achebe, but also griot in this prose mixed with metaphors and proverbs.
Didn't Kourouma say
"when speech is lost, it is thanks to the proverb that we find it"
?
A writing strategy that the chronicler of the
“Rooster Chante”
has made his own, less to find the lost word, than to explain why the tomorrows do not sing in an Africa traumatized by its repeated tragedies.
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