BOBO-DIOULASSO, Burkina Faso, Sept 28 (AFP) - Whether they teach karate, help street children, stem progression of the desert or the AIDS pandemic, Japan's low-profile aid volunteers have become extremely popular in Burkina Faso.
Cooperation between Japan and the land-locked west African country has been gathering unprecedented momentum for the past three years, and is set to pick up more steam at an international conference on the continent's development that opens Monday in Tokyo at which Japan is set to pledge one billion dollars in grants over five years.
The improving cooperation follows a decision by Japanese authorities to send volunteers to assist some of the country's largely rural population to win the battle against grinding poverty.
"Our deep conviction is that it does not necessarily take money and financial support to pull Africa out of its predicament," said Yuki Atsuko, who coordinates the Japanese volunteer service in Burkina Faso.
"We expected them to stride along in suits and chewing cigars as executives in large corporate groups, but they come in all humility to share in our sufferings and mosquito bites," commented an appreciative Ali Traore, a civil servant in the southern city of Bobo-Dioulasso, the country's economic capital.
Indeed Japan's 40 volunteers seem to take the harsh climate and a radical change in diet in their strides as they put their engineering, technical and other skills at the service of Burkina's rural population.
Take Fujimoto Naohiro, 27, who hails from Osaka. He is a bit of an exception as he has decided to devote his time to helping Bobo's street children.
This is not just difficult, it can also be dangerous. And yet day in, day out, Naohiro roams the town in search of the street urchins who typically hang about outside restaurants, movie theatres or bakers' shops looking for mischief.
"The reason I do this is to try and persuade those more involved in petty crime to give up on drugs and robbery and to raise their awareness of HIV-AIDS," said Naohiro.
A colleague of his, Kazuhiro Akashi, works hard to help the children step closer to leaving the streets. In an effort to raise their self-awareness and stimulate positive attitudes, he enrolls them in his amateur theatrical company.
Beyond the short term, Akashi looks to place the children with host families or with a French child protection group.
"We're not talking of major revolutions here, just little day-to-day things in a bid to steer fate on a less negative course," said a rural Burkinabe.
Those little things come in a wide variety of ways.
Yuko Nakabuko works as a midwife in Kompienga, east of the country; in Orodara, at the other end of Burkina, Hirotoshi Tsuda shows market-gardeners how to graft mango trees, while in the south, Odagiri and Harada walk around rice fields to spread innovative agricultural methods.
Other volunteers train local people into the mechanics of diesel engines, such as Yoshikazu, or into the subtleties of karate, like Daisuke Matsuda.
As for Tsnuhehiro, he shares his time between reforestation and football classes for local young boys in Kaya, north of the country -- and the balls are donated by people back home in Japan.
The Japanese volunteers' activism and popularity with local people stand in sharp contrast to the low personal profile they maintain at all times.
Like the people they help, they eat local dishes, based on corn meal and wild leaves, and get along with whatever vocabulary they manage in one of the local languages.
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