Une fillette de neuf ans a sauvé le président Ibrahim Traoré d'un méchant cuisinier envoyé pour ...

President Ibrahim Traoré woke that morning with a strange feeling in his chest, as if something were calling to him beyond the thick walls of Ouagadougou's presidential palace. He had spent the last few weeks locked away in endless meetings, signing documents that decided the fate of millions of people, but he felt he was losing touch with the reality of his people. So, without warning his bodyguards or his security team, he put on a pair of old canvas pants, a simple shirt, and a worn cap he had kept since his student days. He slipped a few bills into his pocket and slipped out discreetly through a side door few people knew about. The streets of Ouagadougou were already bustling despite the early hour. Street vendors shouted their prices, women carried basins filled with fruit on their heads, and children ran barefoot between the makeshift stalls. Ibrahim walked slowly, observing everything with a newfound attention. He saw an old man sitting on a rickety stool, mending shoes with rusty tools. Further on, a mother was rocking her baby while trying to sell a few wilted tomatoes arranged on a piece of cardboard. Each scene made his heart ache a little more. He continued on his way until he came to a poorer neighborhood, where the houses were nothing more than assemblages of corrugated iron and wooden planks. It was there that he saw her for the first time. She was sitting against a mud-brick wall, her knees drawn up to her chest, her torn clothes revealing her thin arms covered in red dust. Her hair was matted, and her eyes, though exhausted, retained a strange clarity. She couldn't have been more than nine years old.