Burkina Faso is a small country in West Africa. At 274,200 sq. km, it is about the size of the state of Colorado.

With a population of about 16.3 million people, Burkina has a Sahelian climate with pronounced wet and dry seasons. Burkina Faso is an ethnically integrated, secular state. Officially, there are 63 ethnic groups in the country.

Burkina Faso is also a country of culture, and because of the diversity of ethnic groups, many cultural practices are observed. One of the most important and widespread customs in Burkina Faso is Rakiire (cross-ethnic joking).

According to Alain Joseph, research director at the Societies Sciences Institute of Ouagadougou, two types of Rakiire should be considered. The first type of Rakiire is the family joking relationship.

This kind of Rakiire exists within the same family between grandson and grandmother, granddaughter and grandfather, husband and junior sister-in-law, and nephews/nieces and aunts.

The second type of Rakiire is the cross-ethnic joking relationship. In this case, two or more ethnic groups decide freely to make an agreement that includes a nonaggression pact and mutual support.

But what is Rakiire?

Rakiire consists of two people within the same big family or two different ethnic groups telling jokes that are often very sour and border on insolence. For instance, a grandson will say to his grandmother,

“Are you still alive, Grandmother? When are you dying?”

The grandmother will answer:

“Naughty boy, I will survive you.”

In the case of Rakiire between two ethnic groups, two people who meet can talk to each other as follows:

First person:

“Hello, how is your good-for-nothing father doing?”

Second person:

“Hi! My father is well. How about your wreck of father?”

These hard words are not meant to harm or despise, but to express membership of community.

Rakiire is a thousand-year-old custom. No one can say when exactly it started; however, cross-ethnic joking is considered a dynamic, evolutionary practice.

Rakiire within a big family evolves as marital relations are formed and children are brought into the world. Rakiire insults never lead to a brawl.

When a person starts “insulting” the parents of someone else, he can only insult the father. The mother is not insulted because generally she is from another ethnic group. The purpose of these joke “insults” is to allow people to have fun and remember the pact of nonaggression and assistance that exists between their ethnic groups.

In his book Alliances and Cross-ethnic Joking in Burkina Faso, Alain Joseph speaks about the role Rakiire plays with those who practice it. Both children and adults learn how to have a culture of tolerance and accept others just as they are. Thus, various social groups learn how to live together.

Rakiire makes it possible to remember that the person in front of you is not your enemy, but someone with whom you can maintain a nonaggressive relationship, whatever the situation.

In case of conflict, it is possible to actually use Rakiire to defuse the conflict. In fact, Rakiire can be connected with the freedom of speech. One is free to voice what he thinks without being worried. Author Joseph explains,

“One plays the symbolic war so as not to wage real war.”

Rakiire is practiced most often in rural environments. In the modern society of Burkina Faso, Rakiire is known only in a very superficial way. It is very often seen like folklore, a means to let off steam and get away with it. Few people in big cities fully practice Rakiire.

The ignorance of Rakiire in the cities means that when an unspecified crisis is declared, it is necessary to resort to other methods to address the crisis. Those who believe in Rakiire can rely on the values of tolerance and the nonaggressiveness of Rakiire to avoid revenge or reprisals and maintain social cohesion.

Some Rakiire relationships were born after bloody conflicts as a way of saying “never again.”

Rakiire is also found among Christians. Just as in society as a whole, it is seen as the cement of fraternity and friendship between people. Obviously, Christians in the church do not allow themselves to be as virulent when exchanging opinions. They are more kind and exchange only decent, but funny jokes.

For example, a Gourmantché person (Gourmantché people live in the eastern part of the country) who arrives at a church for the first time and introduces himself will quickly will become friends with a Yadsés person (from the northern part of the country) in the church.

There is even an organization in the country called Association Burkinabe pour la Promotion de la Parenté à Plaisanterie, which means Association for the Promotion of Cross-Ethnic Joking in Burkina. This association has organized three cross-ethnic joking days in Ouagadougou, where many activities related to traditions and ethnic customs are demonstrated.

The organization aims at promoting Rakiire in cities so that it can bring peace between individuals and among ethnic groups.

While Rakiire cannot be used to resolve all crises in society, it has its place in the culture of Burkina Faso.

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It is sunrise on Friday, just a week before Christmas. The morning smells fresh and the sun shines strongly. A light breeze fills the air with that cool Christmas feeling. For a foreigner, it would almost feel like spring, but for Salvadorans, it feels like Christmas.

This is how the day starts for the team at the Lighthouse Child Development Center, run by the Central American Mission Church in a municipality of San Salvador named Soyapango.

Soyapango is north of the San Salvador metropolitan area. It is an industrial zone, with factories for brand-name beverages and a local shoe brand. Soyapango is also home to thousands of lower middle class to lower class families. According to the last census, it is the third most populated place in El Salvador, representing 4 percent of the population (nearly 250,000 people). Soyapango is also a stronghold of the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 gang.

Yet, all that smoke from the factories and trucks, and the danger and crime, seem to fade away because it is Christmas time.

For the children at Lighthouse, that Friday, December 17, becomes Christmas. The special event has been planned for months, and arranged for days, with love and enthusiasm from the center staff. All week they have been working on the final arrangements – the food, the decorations, the packaging of the presents.

Every Compassion center in El Salvador presents a yearly schedule of the events they will hold, to plan and budget accordingly. The Christmas celebration is one of the biggest. It does not only mean lunch and piñatas for the children, but it also reminds them that there are people who care for them, at the center and also far away.

Their sponsors think about the children, and it is because of them that this celebration is possible and that the children receive a present for Christmas. Raul and his team recognize that effort made by the sponsors to bless the lives of the children, and they put their best efforts toward that celebration.

When asked about the average situation of the children in the community, Raul answers,

“They come from three communities: San Luis, October 10th, and March 16th. These are places with scarcity, dust floors, aluminum walls. Some people must survive on $1 a day. Our children do not want to go on vacation because they know that they will lack the meal they receive at the center, and also the love and hugs.”

Knowing this reality changes the perspective, and for Raul and the team it is not a celebration on the calendar – it is the opportunity for a blessing.

To celebrate Christmas in El Salvador means to mix a variety of traditional Christian beliefs and adopted Western customs.

Christmas for El Salvadorans still carries a strong meaning that brings families together. Despite the business on the streets and the red, green and white flooding the environment, Salvadoran people try honor the true meaning of Christmas – the birth of Jesus.

Santa Claus is known for appearing in TV and print ads, but people ask children if they already wrote a letter to little baby Jesus instead.

For Brother Raul and his staff, to host the Christmas event means an opportunity to put a smile on the face of each child and teenager at the center. They hold the celebration for the teenagers two days earlier, on Wednesday.

“With the older ones we make a special dinner. They all dress up. We start at the temple and then each of the tutors accompanies their students one by one to the place we prepare with the tables.”

Today, Friday, is reserved for the little ones. There are flowers at the center of the tables, all decorated with white tablecloths. But the nice lunch is just the frosting. They have prepared a special Christmas program for the children.

“In other years we just had a piñata. This year we had a clown who performed a small play to teach the children that their heart must be just for God. We wanted to do something that will have an impact.

“Nobody gives attention to these children. They might live in the capital city, but they have no attention, no love. What our center gives is love, understanding, and attention. We want them to know that somebody thought about them.”

The program starts with songs and games in a “Father Abraham” fashion. The clown presents the play. Then it is piñata time, followed by lunch. While the children enjoy fried chicken with fries and salad, all of them homemade, the staff starts to prepare for the moment that all of them wait for: the Christmas presents.

Raul says that in past years, most of the children chose shoes over the gift options they are given, including toys and clothes, because it serves them to go to school. For many children, the shoes that they received for Christmas was the only pair they received for the year.

This year, since the new government said they will provide shoes and uniforms to all the children in the public school system, the best long-term need the center can fulfill is the school bag, something that even the parents have agreed to. The children will remember every time they see that school bag that there is a sponsor who cares for them.

“Our parents understand that there is someone on the other side of the world making an effort to help their children because they love them. It has a big impact to know that someone cares,”

“We thank God for the sponsors lives, and we ask God to pour blessings over them. They are sowing, and they will see the fruit. God will provide and multiply everything they give.

“Thanks for providing for one more Salvadoran – one that will become a doctor, a lawyer …. Thanks for being a Good Samaritan, for giving us a hand and caring for our children. For a smile that you put on their faces, or a tear that you wipe off their cheeks, God will bless you.”

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Do you think this way? What traditions have you started in your own home to cultivate an understanding of what the poor go through in the developing world? We’re just starting out, and I know we can get more consistent, but here’s a glimpse of what we do:

• I made an 8-by-10 print of this picture taken by Tonny Tunya. It’s in our dining room. Occasionally, we pause to see whatever we’re facing through the bright eyes of these children whose playground is a garbage dump in Indonesia. At best, our conversations are speculative. But there’s truth in these talks, too. And our perspective is refined bit by bit.



• When we sit down for a meal and make the effort to think about Karen, our sponsored child in the Philippines, and her family, our gratitude to God for the food in front of us grows deeper.
• We’re moving in the direction of connecting each one of our kids to a different sponsored child. They’ll get to minister and be ministered to through sharing words of hope, art and prayers. Who knows? Maybe our kids will be some of the few of their generation to have a true pen pal.
• I’m memorizing verses about children and the poor and my son is helping me. I hope that these scriptures sink in for him, too, and that seeing his dad take the time to do this would inspire him.

I’m sure there are many other ways to teach children about poverty through day-to-day life. I’ve heard of kids initiating fund raisers and families who rethink gift-giving at Christmas. Some of these families have even gone on one of Compassion’s sponsor tours to see it all with their own eyes.

Would you take a few moments to share your traditions? It’s OK if you don’t do them 100 percent of the time. None of us do. But we want to. And it’d be great to learn from others. The kids need it. Ours and theirs.

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