This is a journey through the reality of Sierra Leone, a country in which the Augustinian Recollects have left their mark. The author, with his soul in pain but in love with Sierra Leone after a year in the country, tells us the story sometimes in the first person, other times from the point of view of the objective observer, with traces of humor and dreams for the future of this country.
Talking of the support classes for the students, another anecdote shows the educational situation. Until a lightning bolt burnt out the electrical installation of the pastoral centre, for three months we offered support classes at night. At home the children don’t have electricity, so this space was well received by all. The study was guided: I helped the, every night, responded to their doubts and explained subjects. In short, they start to see me as a teacher.
In an isolated society, without the sufficient culture to talk about subjects which life offers, and with too much free time rumours take hold, “congossaie” (pronounced “congosar”) or vulgarly put “gossip”. Three weeks into the guided study I found out about the gossip: the girls decided I was a “teacher who only taught”.
At first sight it is a comment without much sense or transcendence. But the real meaning is astonishing. “Only teaches” because I didn’t dedicate time to also “interact in other ways” with my students. A person who understands, a useful word to the wise.
Conclusion: teachers normally “interact”. In an interview for the Association of Gender and development in Kamabai, which fights for the rights of women, the promotion of universal education and the elimination of the custom of female genital mutilation it emerged that 4% of pregnancies in adolescents in Kamabai were due to teacher-student “interaction”.
In return, the teacher would increase marks, ignore absences in class, and eliminate the traditional possibility that “the teacher’s got it in for me”. A small percentage, but extremely significant.
The formal education is one of the sensitive points for material development. If western societies have understood that the inversion I+D are today gainings in the future, it is advisable that for the development of any society that that is a condition “sine qua non” the elimination of illiteracy, universal schooling and equal access to the opportunities. All this only schools can offer.
On the 3rd of January we went to hand out school materials in the villages furthest away from Kamabai, handing over pens, pencils, felt tips, erasers. The generosity of the students from the Colleges of the Augustinian Recollects in Spain permits this work.
In three quarters of an hour one of these “psychological slumps” arrived, which in Sierra Leone appear as unexpectedly as Malaria. Three villages in a row in which not one boy or girl, no one, went to school causing unease and inner anger.
Every time that something is handed out the entire village arrives. Seeing that we were only handing out to school children, everyone from old people to babies said they were students. After selecting possible candidates, we observed that as soon as we handed out the erasers the small ones ate them. We halted the hand-over and only then it was recognized that this was the first time they had seen an eraser and no-one knew how to read or write. No-one in three successive villages went to school.
Imagine the following. You are called Fatmata or Ibrahim, you are fourteen and live in Biriwa. If you are lucky you are not in this 20-30% of children that will never set foot in a regional school: you are a student.
You get out of bed at 4:45, which you share with three other children to sweep the street with a stick broom. Your eyes are accustomed to the dark (I assure you they see what I would never see at this level of light); if there is a full moon it will be much easier.
Afterwards you warm up yesterday’s food for all the family. It’s 6:30 and for the next twelve hours you will not eat another thing. After washing everything, you go to the well to collect water. You do not know what a tap or a shower is. Therefore after this you go to the paddy field to bathe. In a short time you will have to walk a little further and the water will be stale and dirty.
You dress in the only uniform you have, whose colour reveals your school and grade. It usually costs between 25,000 and 60,000 Leones (or five to twelve Euros), and it is one of the burdensome parts for families. Also, the Wesleyan school like the Islamic one have a four-month period fee of some 20,000 Leones (four Euros). It is not uncommon those that start the four-month period but do not finish for lack of funds. When the family has five or more children, or the father has another wife, or two, or three, only one person has to pay the fees and uniforms for more than ten children. Many are left out of school for this reason.
If you don’t live in the village where the school is you will have to walk between an hour and a half or two hours there and something similar on the way back. Strong rains, cruel sun, desert wind (harmattan)…few times the conditions are favourable.
In your class there are another 80 students, like in a sardine tin. Desks for two people are used by three. The heat is stifling. There are no books and there are interminable lessons from the board. You don’t even understand well the language the lessons are written in. All the official exams are in English, but many teachers don’t even use it in class and they changed it for Krio.
Your teachers aren’t well trained earn little or nothing, and in many cases are alcoholics. Sometimes they use part of the days’ lessons so that you work for them, planting, looking for wood or collecting the harvest.
At two o’clock you return home, wash your uniform so that it will be dry for tomorrow and you go to the fields. That is until six, when you eat again and return to the village.
At night, you study a little. There are no tables or chairs and you use a querosone lamp with a small vibrating flame that leaves shadows everywhere. Study is reduced to repeating out loud what you have copied into your book, asking about the words you don’t understand, looking for meanings and memorizing. Few students understand completely what they read and assimilate in their brains.
Having seen the robot picture of the student in Kamabai, the question is immediate: Is there a solution? It is a dark world, not only because of the physical lack of light, but rather because of the psychological, emotional and intellectual conditions which must be faced.
Without taking on what they study, there are other added “means of knowledge” that exercise a brutal influence on the young: absurd beliefs, frauds, secret societies, fear. It is probable that the students of Kamabai will never understand that the Earth is in the Solar System, but I can assure you that not one of them would deny that if one day they saw the secret dance of the Bgnabani without being initiated, their nose would fall off and would bleed for the rest of their lives.
To make things worse, the use of physical violence is a common pedagogical tool, education is expensive, university is at the level of the few and the colleges are in ruins.
An example of the absurd: one weekend a largish group of secondary school students came to me because they had been given homework. Put yourself in their place: there is no light, newspapers, television, radio, Internet, nothing. Then a teacher asks them for a list of the Government in Sierra Leone with its ministers, ministries and vice ministers.
To get hold of this information a Spanish student would need five minutes: they would go to Mr. Google, ask, copy, paste, print and hand it in. Now tell me how a young student from Kadagbana, who arrives home after walking for two hours from Kamabai to a place without electricity, with no office or anything, would do it with no one to ask.
I am sure that the enlightened teacher of secondary education at the Wesleyan school, who decided to give out this task to his students so that they could resolve it, would not know the answer. Damn it! Who in Spain would know from memory the name of the ministers, ministries and vice-ministers? Still more important ¿What use does it possibly have?
When I gave to Thomas, the young man from Kadagbana, the list which I got off the Internet he told me: “I am very happy” (‘they will not flog me this time!’). I was left shocked: you give them an impossible task, you beat them if they can’t do it. I thought immediately that this was the metaphysical opposite of “give what you ask and ask what you wish” of Saint Augustine.
Some figures: in Biriwa in 2001 not one student passed the West African Senior Secondary Examination (WASSE), the “criteria” which allows someone to go from secondary education till university. In terms of the al Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), to pass from junior secondary to senior, the pass rate is no higher than 30%. Also the National Primary School Examination (NPSE), the exam for passing from primary to secondary education, more than 80% do not pass. For this reason there are some fifteen schools with level six in primary education and only three with the first level of secondary education. This exam is a rite of passage for students.
The three exams (NPSE, BECE, WASSE) are common and the same for Sierra Leone, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea and Liberia. But the schools and the conditions are not the same in Kamabai and Freetown, or between Freetown and Accra. ¿Why this injustice? ¿Would it not be better to teach rather than give out absurd tasks which require tiring out you arms in giving out beatings?
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