Scrap metal, tin cans, auto parts.
At a rough-and-ready gym in Ouagadougou’s rundown Dapoya district, young bodybuilders using homemade weights know powerful muscles can lead to a job.
“We started out with tin cans that we filled with cement or with sand,” says Maxime Tiendrebeogo, 40, who founded the MM Club with his brother Mathieu 20 years ago.
Photo: AFP
Surrounded by rundown buildings and a graveyard of rusting vehicles and scattered auto parts, a dozen sweaty people are working out in the dappled light of the thatched hut.
About 60 members exercise there every week, many tattooed with crosses and broken hearts. The open neck of Maxime’s T-shirt shows scars that he says are “knife cuts I got when helping a friend who was being beaten up.”
At the MM Club, the equipment is made of scrap material, from engine cylinders and clutch plates to steel petanque balls. The benches are worm-eaten, dust hangs in the air, some of the weights are painted in the red, green and yellow of Burkina Faso’s national colors.
“We collect what we need, have it weighed by an ironmonger, then take it to the welder,” says MM member Idrissa, who works nights as bouncer at a dance hall.
“I have two children in school,” he adds. “Now that I have money coming in every month, I’m going to be able to study.”
After leaving his village at 10 and like thousands of others working in an opencast gold mine, Idrissa came to Ouagadougou looking for work before meeting the two gym founders.
“It began with a fight with Maxime,” he said. “The next day, he suggested I join.”
Most club members work as security guards or bouncers and earn an average of 80,000 CFA francs (US$138) a month, a decent wage in the Sahel nation that is one of the poorest in the world.
“We lift young people out of difficulty by helping them to find stable employment. When they don’t know where to go, we house them,” Maxime says.
“Those who have jobs give financial support to the others until they too find work, but if somebody does the work badly, if they don’t respect the rules, they’re kicked out of the club,” he adds, sitting in his favorite bar-restaurant, a short distance from the gym.
Zakaria left his village for the city three years ago in hope of helping his family. Until he met the bodybuilders, he lived on the streets, sleeping on cardboard and selling bread.
“Before I began developing my muscles, I couldn’t carry a bag of rice,” the 18-year-old says.
Now he works days at a bus station, handling heavy goods, and at night as the watchman for a bar-restaurant.
“My fitness helped,” he said.
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