About Me

My name is Kate Larose.  I am 34 years old and live in Vermont with my husband, Josh and 3 year old son, Jaxon.  I first met Jonas when I served in the Bougouriba region of Burkina Faso, West Africa as a health worker with the Peace Corps from 2002-2004.   I was assigned to Tioyo, a tiny village hours away from telephone, running water, and electricity.  Having traveled to many countries around the world I thought I understood poverty.  However I remember being completely unprepared for what life was like in the one of the poorest regions of the world’s third poorest country. 

This is where I came to know Jonas.  His family’s compound consisted of a mud hut and three large rocks for cooking.  No chairs, no mattresses, no latrine…nothing else.  As a large family of subsistence farmers, they didn’t have much to share as they lived purely from what their land yielded, but everything they did have they gladly shared with me.  Typically they would have one meal a day which consisted of millet grain.  During “hungry season” (the months between planting a crop and waiting for harvest), this one meal a day became one meal every other day.  Once or twice a year during holidays, they would celebrate with a special meal—rice or spaghetti, with maybe a few ounces of meat for each person if there was a chicken to spare.  When money was needed (50 cents to cure someone with malaria, or a dollar for Jonas’ elementary school fees), it was up to Jonas’ mother to figure out which of their few animals they could sell.  When there was nothing to sell, it was up to Jonas himself to figure out how to pay for his school and he often worked selling dried fish and vegetables at market for pennies a day. 

Every morning I walked outside to find Jonas, then a boy of just eight years old, sitting on my terrace with a huge smile, almost always with a gift in hand (some of my favorite bush fruit, a pet of the day such as a chameleon or a hedgehog, and sometimes little toys made from my recycled trash).  During the early morning hours and noontime break, he was always at my house so we could go over his school lessons, and the evening always found me sitting around the fire outside of his family’s hut.    Jonas helped me to experience Burkina through the eyes of a child and love village life the way he did: the joy of dancing in the rain; pond fishing with baskets, harvesting shea butter; catching termites for chickens or for our snacks; tracking the village crocodile; making games out of broken shoes and stones; waiting for the next big adventure which was surely just around the corner.  He taught me to how to tend a garden, perfect the art of transporting water on my head, and how to cultivate maize, peanuts, and rice.  Jonas and his family helped to keep me safe during my time in village.  Several times when I was gravely ill, it was his family who watched over and cared for me, and ensured that I could get on the bus to the capital when I was in need of healthcare. 

As I came to know Jonas and his family, I promised that I would do everything within my power to help provide for a brighter future and education for him and his school aged siblings.  As a young adult of just 20 years old myself at the time (and a volunteer at that), I wasn’t sure how I was going to keep my promise, just that I would.  

Strangely enough, it appears that reclaimed pallet wine racks are one possibility ;)

(Kate and her husband Josh during a visit to Jonas' village in 2007.  Pictured here are Jonas' mother, father,and older brother Sibiri.)