By Julie Espinosa
Toupta Bougena was on her way to a village in Chad to install a new well when paramilitary rebels stopped her car and ordered everyone out.
“We are searching the car for weapons,” said one rebel.
They weren”t interested in money or cell phones. One of the men jumped into the driver”s seat, and Bougena kicked herself for leaving the key inside.
“You know what?” said one man, leaning against the car and shifting his Kalashnikov semiautomatic rifle to one side. “We are in a big group and we got lost. We need your car to go.”
The man called for his comrades to get in and started the car.
“Stop, Bougena,” said her sister. “It”s not worth it. Let them go.”
But instead, Bougena grabbed the door of the car. They dragged her along for a few feet before stopping. She and her passengers got back in the car and were allowed to reach the village unharmed.
“They didn”t quite expect that,” Bougena said later to the chief of the army. “How can I do this job without the car? I needed my car to reach my villages and to my work.”
Bougena, who earned her PhD at BYU in 2003, has partnered with LDS members in American Fork to create a humanitarian NGO (non-governmental organization) that is bringing advances in literacy, agriculture, medical care and water access to “her” eight villages in Chad.
The story of how Bougena got her education and decided to give back to her home country, how BYU students and faculty got involved, and how supplies made it halfway around the world to people suffering in the third most corrupt country is a story of miracles.
Despite the obstacles she has faced returning to this, the fourth-poorest country in the world, Bougena has hope for Chad”s future.
“I think things will get better,” Bougena said to geography students at BYU. “Hope is what we Christians live by. You don”t see things getting better if we run away.”
Fertile soil
Bougena isn”t just hopeful; she”s also quite stubborn. Whether she”s faced a paramilitary rebel, a bureaucrat or a college admissions board, Bougena got her way in the end. She decided long ago to get an education-deciding to follow her father and study agronomy, the study of crop production and soil management.
She traveled with him through the country and saw how better agronomy techniques could improve people”s lives. Her father wanted her to choose another profession (to make more money), but she stuck with it and studied hard in high school.
Then one day in 1985, she heard an announcement on the radio. United Nations representatives were selecting five people to give scholarships to study in the United States.
She showed up, even though she didn”t know English then, and made her case to the interviewers.
“They start laughing,” Bougena recalled. “”This is a very daring person.””
She was chosen to go, but then her dad got sick. She saw him one last time.
“He told me no matter what happens, don”t cry,” Bougena said. “Hold your head high and go to America and study.”
Bougena”s father was buried in a public place for his great humanitarian work. Later she read a letter he had written her.
“There is nothing that will stop you from accomplishing what you want to accomplish what you want to accomplish because the Lord will be with you.”
Bougena earned her bachelor”s and master”s degrees at the University of Arizona, sending back a good part of her stipend to her family so they could buy property and build a house. Then she felt she needed a higher degree.
“BYU turned me down two times,” Bougena said. “Then I got on a bus and showed up in Provo.”
Here at BYU she studied her Ph.D, doing research with the U.S. Forest Service and studying cheatgrass, a non-native weed responsible for many forest fires.
Bougena joined the LDS church when she was at the University of Arizona. She attended a Spanish branch one Sunday. Her son liked it and wanted to return. So did she.
“I didn”t just gain education here in America,” Bougena said. “I gained a new faith, and it makes me a better person than maybe what I would have been. I think the gospel has changed a lot of things in me —my way of looking at others and dealing with them. Maybe something that”s in me, but I think it brings it out more.”
It”s hard for Bougena in Chad, where she”s the only member.
“It”s like you are not living your religion,” she said. “Basically you get cut out from your religion. To stay faithful to the gospel you do reading by yourself. You never get into the discussion with others.”
Going back to Chad after all of her positive experiences in the United States was a decision she made knowing full well what consequences she would face.
At the University of N”Djamena, where she teaches, only 50-year-old biology textbooks are available and the laboratory lacks even basic supplies.
Bougena”s husband is in exile now – where, she doesn”t know – because her brother-in-law fell out of favor with the president. Bougena has so many houseguests that her 5-year-old son Amir complains of people stepping on his feet.
But despite the hardships, Bougena is determined to help lift the people in her homeland.
“Change from the roots”
Less than a year after leaving BYU, Bougena came back to Utah, and the Kendricks, who she was staying with, took her to a humanitarian project at their stake center.
Bougena saw the 2,000 birthing kits they were putting together for women in Afghanistan. She talked to RoseAnn Gunther, the woman who went on to spearhead the stake”s contribution to OCSSAC.
“My country is so poor,” Bougena said. “They could use some of these things. Is there any way you could help us?”
Gunther couldn”t refuse.
“There was no way I could say, ”No, I can”t help you,”” Gunther said. “It”s like handing someone a stone instead of giving them bread.”
The stake made and collected over 1,200 jumpers, 12 bicycles, seeds, shovels, pickaxes, wheelchairs, birthing kits, books and hand water pumps.
It wasn”t easy to transport the care package. The large 18-wheeler-sized container was sitting on the border for months and nearly didn”t make it to the villages. But a concerted effort on Bougena”s and Gunther”s part made sure it got there.
“She knows no fear,” said LuAnn Kendrick, of American Fork, who with her husband helped Bougena bring the goods to the villages. “She is the most quiet, meek woman, and she just knocks and knocks on a door no matter how long it takes, then she walks through. She just does what she has to do.”
Bougena is in the process of establishing an orphanage, a center for women and infants, a center for mentally challenged children, a center for street children, a school, a chicken farm, a tomato garden, programs for literacy, environmental education, and sewing for the eight targeted villages.
In Bougena”s mind, if people don”t have the basic necessities of food, water, security, they won”t be able to change their situation.
“When somebody is suffering they don”t think straight,” Bougena said. “They have to have the basic things in their life for them to think straight and do things.”
Students who are interested in working with the NGO may apply for an internship. More information is at www.geog.byu.edu/GlobalInternships.html.
“What I am doing is just a tiny bit of what I can do,” Bougena said. “If everyone does a tiny bit, the result will be felt everywhere. One person cannot do too much. It has to be a united front to make a difference.”
Since returning with the supplies, she has already seen some of the first fruits of her labor. Children have cleaner water and less swollen bellies. The smiles and tears of joy she witnessed keep her motivated to stay.
“The battlefield is not here,” Bougena said while visiting. “I can”t help being far. If I want to fight a war, I have to fight on the battlefield.”
