When the closest thing to home is the slaughterhouse

Alassane Dieudonné (fictitious name to preserve his identity) wears FC Barcelona pants and when he is tired he picks them up revealing the tattoo he made on his left quadriceps: “575″.

He has another on his left arm, a “7″, in clear reference to his idol, Cristiano Ronaldo (CR7), and his soul team, Real Madrid.

He is 12 years old and sleeps in a bed at the Day and Emergency Center for children and young people in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso, in Burkina Faso.

His normality is not that cot, but the floor of the city slaughterhouse, known in the Diula language as “

” (no one calls anyone, in Spanish).

This is how street children have baptized it, since its meaning is equivalent to the saying “where they don't call you, don't go”.

But they go because they have no other choice.

Dieudonné says that there you never know what can happen to you.

No one calls anyone to that space, but the child knows where he has to go, what his place is.

"The slaughterhouse is where the children who live on the street sleep, I had to go there," says Dieudonné, who wears an orange and blue shirt, the pants of his eternal rival team and the tomato can hanging from his shoulder, icon and uniform of those known as

[street children].

“Remove this from the report, we are not

, we work!”, he exclaims.

vehemently.

Alassane Dieudonné, one of the hundreds of street children in Burkina Faso, in July 2021 in the courtyard of the Reception and Emergency Center of the Tié and NouSol NGO Association, located in sector 15 of the city of Bobo-Dioulasso.

The so-called 'enfants de la rue' (street children) are usually tattooed with cashew nut oil.

Dieudonné wears the number 575 on his leg.Èlia Borràs

Theophile Palenfo, social educator at the Reception and Emergency Center, speaks with a group of children found on the street during the reconnaissance tour that takes place three days a week to identify the most vulnerable in the city of Bobo- Dioulasso, in Burkina Faso.Joel López

In the Wendemi maqui [bar], which is run by Razmané, there is a television where the Francophone channel 'France 24' is normally on.

It is in the slaughterhouse of Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso and, for lack of another place, here the children look for shelter and food.

Elia Borras

Kabirou and Dieudonné at the city's slaughterhouse, where they met and worked together for three months until the day they met Palenfo, who advised them to go eat and visit the Day and Emergency Center.

From that moment they never slept on the street again. Èlia Borràs

The celebration of a goal in the room of the 'Playstation' enabled in the slaughterhouse of the city of Bobo-Dioulasso where street children go to play every night.Joel López

On the day of the Tabaski festival, also known as Eid al-Adha, one of the most important celebrations in the Islamic calendar, Dieudonné visited his family after several months on the street and in the Bobo-Dioulasso Reception and Emergency Center .Èlia Borràs

On the left, the two older sisters of Alassane Dieudonné with their daughters.

On the right, Dieudonné's mother and her little brother, sitting on the deckchair in front of her house in the Colma neighborhood, Bobo-Dioulasso, in July 2021. In Burkina Faso, a woman has, on average, , 5.1 children.

43.7% of the population lives on less than 1.90 euros a day and, according to the Human Development Index (HDI), this West African country is in position 182 of the 189 countries included in the ranking. Elia Borras

On the left, Dieudonné and on the right, Kabirou in front of the Reception and Emergency Center, managed by the Tié Association (which means 'presence' in the language of the Bobo ethnic group), and the Catalan NGO NouSol, which has been operating for five years in Burkina Faso.Joel López

While Dieudonné butchers a cow that probably quadruples its weight inside the slaughterhouse, in the surrounding area the neighbors continue their normal, everyday life: in a class of 130 primary school children they are learning to add;

a mechanic fixes a motorcycle wheel, in the distance a woman balances with a tray of bananas on her head and a man spends time under a baobab tree.

Alassane Dieudonné, a 12-year-old boy, earns 30 euro cents a day and lives on the streets of Burkina Faso

"I work, I don't beg like the others," Dieudonné admits, who earned 200 francs (0.3 euros) a day.

Not all street children seek employment.

Most of them beg around the city to later buy candy or pay for a few games in one of the places where you can play

, and which are a meeting place and entertainment for many kids when night falls.

"We pool money until we reach 1,500 francs (2.29 euros) and that's how we all play," he explains.

The problem of not being recorded

At the Tié Association, a Burkina Faso NGO with more than 20 years of experience,

They have a reception program for six children, with the ultimate goal of returning them to their families and finding professional motivation.

Since it does not reach everyone, since in Bobo-Dioulasso more than 1,000 children and young people live on the street, its reception center – which consists of a room with six beds, bathrooms, a patio with chickens and an office – is open 24 hours a day. hours to attend emergencies, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays they give free food.

In Burkina Faso, a woman has 5.1 children on average and 43.7% of the population lives on less than 1.9 euros a day

Alassane Dieudonneé is the fourth in a family of seven children.

In Burkina Faso, a woman has 5.1 children on average.

This means that families are extensive, changeable and that everyone at home must work to eat.

43.7% of the population lives on less than 1.9 euros a day and the country is in position 182 out of 189 in the UN Human Development Index (HDI).

Many people are missing from these data.

All the children who arrive at the Reception and Emergency Center coordinated by the Tié Association together with the NGO NouSol do not have a birth certificate and, therefore, do not appear in any registry or country.

They are children of the world.

"When I was little I didn't speak," says Dieudonné's older sister (23 years old) while breastfeeding her second daughter.

Her mother travels a lot because she transports clothes from Mali to Burkina Faso.

For this reason, in recent years, the boy has lived with his aunt in Bolomakoté (Bobo-Dioulasso neighborhood) about 10 kilometers from his mother and his brothers.

His father married another woman and never took care of him, although the Ministry of Social Action, politically responsible for the situation of the

, contacted him to find a solution to the situation of abandonment of His little.

There was no answer.

Dieudonne's friend

Kabirou (fictitious name to preserve his identity) is number 555 of the database that the Tié Association has designed to identify children living on the street and to record who they are, even if it is in an Excel.

Dieudonné is number 562 and the identification form shows that he was born in Toma, in the northwest of the country, an area currently controlled by terrorist groups, popularly known as "the red zone" that has already forced more than 1.9 million of Burkinabe to leave their homes and seek another place safe from jihadist violence.

Dieudonné does not think about the brutality that plagues his country, but where he is going to sleep.

Theophile Palenfo (38 years old), a social educator and worker at the Tié Association, believes that he has options for social, school and family reintegration.

"He's going to get off the street and go back to his family because he's not addicted to cola," he explains.

The little boy has smoked a cigarette, but he does not sniff glue, something that his classmates do to hide from hunger, adults and everyday life.

They inhale and exhale a plastic bag in the morning, at noon and at night;

there is no schedule.

They hide this

in their pockets or inside their fist.

Palenfo spends three days making a route through the streets of Bobo-Dioulasso to find out who they are.

That was how he met the two friends and asked them: "Do you think you can start a family here on the street?"

The next morning, Kabirou and Alassane did not go to work and went to eat at the Reception and Emergency Center.

If it weren't for him, they would never have come, since it is very far from the places where children move.

Being an educator in Burkina Faso

As a young man, Palenfo worked for more than 10 years selling Lottus-brand tissues on the street.

“Lottus, lottus!” the children still shout.

Palenfo wears a body of scars and marks that recall a life that he himself refuses to remember.

"The Theophile of the past is dead," he concludes.

He has returned

to the street, but now as an educator, since he has been working as such in Tié for more than 15 years.

He doesn't teach classes, but he knows the street and its codes.

“I had a sliver of hope and started working in a bakery,” he says.

And this is what he transmits to children: hope and other futures.

Thus, his main task is to act as a bridge between the street and the shelter.

“Sometimes my head hurts,” he says.

african fatigue

Razmané runs a small

[bar] called

in the city's slaughterhouse, where children sleep for lack of another roof.

There he serves dinner and also has a television where they usually watch the French channel

.

Since 2003, he has witnessed the precarious situation of children and how they grow older.

“Family fatigue, poverty... Living in Africa is tiring.

For this reason, these children live on the streets, because no one can take care of them, they can only survive thanks to African solidarity, that is, giving them food and shelter.”

There are about 500 cows in front of Razmané's bar waiting at the slaughterhouse and a young girl is placing eggs in a cardboard egg cup.

She points to a group of girls who are observing the interview, one woman is carrying a baby on her back and another is sleeping in the shed of the mosque.

"All of them have been raped," she says.

random numbers

"I lost 900 francs (1.37 euros) playing dice," confesses Dieudonné.

This is a bet: you say six, I say one, and the die picks five.

You have won and you take the money.

This is how he lost what a person earns in a day in Burkina Faso.

“I was very scared and I didn't want my aunt to whip me again, so I didn't come home,” he explains.

With 100 francs (0.15 euros), the teenager left for the slaughterhouse, to escape family violence.

A form of abuse that goes from big to small and is repeated and reproduced.

The causes are multiple and the reasons exist on both sides.

Dieudonné's mother says they didn't look for him, just that he left and didn't come back.

Bobo-Dioulasso is small enough to meet an acquaintance at a traffic light, but not small enough to find your son.

Suddenly, they vanish, they emancipate.

And with luck they can run into Palenfo one night, or a new friend, or someone who will promise them a better life in Mali, Ivory Coast or Niger.

And maybe they will work in a gold mine, or on a cashew plantation, or someone will convince them that in the north of the country they will have a better life, goals, a woman, money, weapons,

and a group with whom to fight and feel part of the world.

The movement is constant and moving such a small body is easy and discreet.

Only Kabirou knows what the 575 tattooed on Dieudonné means.

Friends stuff.

And with his back to it, he puts his two thumbs and forefingers together to make the shape of the heart.

Dieudonné turns suddenly and spoils his form, throws himself at him and says “sht, sht, pas vrai!”

(is a lie!).

Palenfo doesn't know what it means either, but he also has a tattoo from when he was selling on the street.

He rolls up his sleeves and shows his forearm.

"I have a snake, I cut my skin with my fingernail and then injected cashew nut oil."

This is how tattoos are done.

“When you grow up it erases from your skin.

He doesn't explain why a snake;

he just strokes it with his forefinger.

Dieudonné confesses his secret in exchange for a piece of gum.

"The five of Sergio Busquets, the seven of Cristiano Ronaldo and the other five of Bertrand Traoré", the soccer star of Bobo-Dioulasso.

But he doesn't fit.

His Burkinabé idol has never worn a five.

Kabirou saves him again: "Cherché Miralem Pjanic!"

(search for Miralem Pjanic), the Bosnian footballer who wore that number

for four seasons at Juventus.

Dieudonné raises his head, his tattoo

makes sense again, and gives the audience a witty look.

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