Burkina Faso: the trauma of the "orphans of Sankara"
Audio 02:14
"The orphans of Sankara", a film by Geraldine Berger.
© The Movies for a Day
By: Gaëlle Laleix Follow
2 min
As the trial of the assassination of Thomas Sankara resumes in Ouagadougou, the hundreds of Burkinabe adolescents who were sent for training in Cuba in the 1980s bear witness to the trauma that the loss of the president represented for them.
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In 1986, 600 adolescents left Burkina Faso to go to Cuba for training, in an exchange program set up by former President Thomas Sankara and his Cuban counterpart Fidel Castro.
Aged between 12 and 15, they are chosen by the President of Burkina Faso on social criteria, coming from rural and disadvantaged families.
But a year later, the father of the Burkinabè revolution is assassinated.
The students finish their course and return six years later to their country which they no longer recognize.
Florence was one of them.
Every morning, on the Youth Island off the coast of Cuba, Burkinabè students sang the Cuban national anthem.
She still remembers it today, just as she remembers October 15, 1987, when she learned of the death of Thomas Sankara.
“
When we were told that there had been a coup d'état in Burkina Faso, we already knew that our president was dead.
At school, there was total silence.
We went without eating.
We couldn't even sleep.
We were crying.
I don't know how to tell it to you.
You had to live it to understand,
”says Florence.
Stigmatized
On their return from Cuba, a job in the public service should be guaranteed to the students, so that they help the development of Burkina Faso. Inoussa Dakambari was trained in civil engineering. Returned in 1993, he was disillusioned. “
When we came back, we were victims of prejudice. Some said that we were coming to avenge Sankara. Even today, we do not have the real equivalences to our diplomas, which has put a brake on our professional careers.
»Trained in manual work, Inoussa Dakambari says he is doing«
a little
», even if it is difficult.
Also trained militarily, the students who left for Cuba worried the Blaise Compaoré regime, which marginalized them.
“
In offices, we are sometimes nicknamed 'the Cuban'.
Sankara dead and buried, we have nothing more to do here.
Some of our compatriots treated us like foreigners
”, testifies Charles Kaboré, trained in industrial mechanics, denouncing“
humiliation, contempt
”.
Today the orphans of Sankara are still asking for the recognition of their diplomas, the reconstitution of careers for those in the public service and compensation for the relatives of their missing comrades.
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