Pobé- Mengao
Koromfe is now (as of 2022) a language without a language area. My work on Koromfe has primarily been based on the language of Pobé-Mengao, which is the capital of the traditional area of Lorom (not to be confused with the relatively new département of Loroum, whose capital is Titao). The village of Pobé-Mengao was evacuated in April 2022, and the last 2000 survivors evaded the attackers by choosing an unexpected flight route.
Many of the survivors now live in camps near Ouagadougou. They have no jobs and no capital to start a small business. They have no savings, no food, few clothes and many have no papers, because they had to just drop everything and flee for their lives. One effect of this is that most of the school-age Koromba children cannot go to school because they cannot be registered without a birth certificate.
We are trying to help as best we can, and on 26th March 2023 reached a milestone: the association that we founded in Austria (called "Hilfe für Pobé-Mengao", i.e. Help for Pobé-Mengao) went online. So please check that webpage: hfp-m.org.
Can we help these young Koromba refugees learn their mother tongue? Or will they be victims of the "killer" languages Mňoré and French?