reallives4

Alezeta: Last to bed and first to rise
Early every morning at about 5:30 a.m., 13-year old Alezeta wakes up in the
darkness of her small, mud-brick home in a poor, outlying 'quartier' of
Ouagadougou, Burkina-Faso and begins her long, lonely and tiring day.
It starts by collecting firewood piled up on one side of the house, then building a
fire to heat water. As the cool temperatures of the dry, savannah night rise with
the sun, Alezeta gets out the cooking pots that she cleaned the night before,
rinses the night's desert dust off them and begins to prepare a basic morning
meal for her parents, brothers and sisters. Next, she helps to wash and clean her
younger brothers and sisters from a bucket of water: no easy task given that she
has four.
After that, she helps dress the children for school – in the clothes that she
washed the day before – making sure they have their books before seeing them
out of the small, dusty courtyard. Then, Alezeta begins her never-ending list of
daily household chores: sweeping the courtyard with a small bundle of twigs;
cleaning the house; washing the big cooking pots; washing the clothes; hanging
them out to dry; going to the market to buy food; collecting water at the local
water pump; and, whatever other jobs she is given throughout the day.
At night – the family doesn't have enough money to buy food for lunch every day -
she repeats the breakfast routine of collecting the wood, setting the fire, helping
to prepare dinner and making sure everyone is fed. Then, she washes the pots
again, washes her younger brothers and sisters, gets their clothes ready for
school the next day and then gets them ready for bed. By 8:30-9:00 p.m., when all
the work is done and everyone else is already in bed, she crawls onto the thin
foam-mattress that she shares with her sister – her twin (non-identical) sister -
Haoua. But Haoua's daily routine is much different, much less tiring and far more
interesting and full of promise than Alezeta's.
"I am a poor man", says Alezeta's father. "I used to work as a driver but I lost my
job because they said I was too old. So now, I don't work very much but I do
whatever labour I can to make money. It makes me sad to have to make a choice
like that, but I had no other way."
"Alezeta is a different kind of girl", continues her father. "She keeps to herself
and doesn't talk or play so much with the other children and you can see the
problem with her eyes." (Alezeta is slightly cross-eyed). "I just thought that
Alezeta's twin sister, Haoua, was much stronger and because I didn't have
enough money to pay the schooling for both of them, that's how I made the choice
that Haoua would go to school and not Alezeta. But, I really wish I had the money
for both of them to go to school full-time. That's what I hope for, because
Alezeta's a good girl. And a good worker, too."