Baccalauréat · Série E · Anglais — 2023

TEXT — The workshop that never stops

In the industrial zone of Kossodo, in Ouagadougou, the workshop of Monsieur Compaoré repairs what other people throw away: pumps, gearboxes, alternators, and the heavy machines of the cotton factories.

« A new gearbox costs eleven million francs and takes four months to arrive, » he explains. « We rebuild the old one in three weeks for a tenth of the price. The factory cannot wait four months: four months without production is the end of the company. »

The workshop employs nineteen people. Six of them are apprentices, and none of them has ever seen the inside of a technical school. They learn by watching, then by holding the tool while somebody watches them.

Safety is the first lesson. Two years ago, a young welder lost the sight of one eye because he had lifted his mask for « only a second ». Since that day, nobody enters the welding area without a helmet, and Monsieur Compaoré checks it himself, every morning.

« People think repairing is what you do when you are poor, » he says. « I think it is what you do when you are intelligent. A machine that is repaired ten times has been understood ten times. »