Are young people as apathetic as everyone thinks they are?
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 29/Apr/2011 16:55, 34 days ago
Training up some of the lycee students in Maga to go out into the village and do community sensitisation on the importance of primary education seemed like a great idea when I first thought of it. Not only would it mean that we could reach far more parents than my national volunteer and I could ever do on our own, it also would give some responsibility to the students for the development of their community. The students who make it to the top classes of the lycee are a tiny proportion of the young people in Maga and will be the future elites of the village.However everyone I mentioned it to was very dubious about whether the students would be interested, because I was adamant that the students would not receive any money for taking part in the activity. NGOs are well known here for giving healthy payouts to everyone who attends their workshops; I was once paid 30,000 CFA for participating in a three day workshop on sanitation, as much as my national volunteer gets paid in a month. The concept of volunteering for the sake of helping the community isn’t helped by the fact that I am referred to as a ‘volunteer’, as everyone in Maga can see that I am paid a very healthy wage (by Cameroonian standards).“They won’t do it unless you pay them something,” said my national volunteer, the Inspector, the Headmaster of the lycee, the deputy-headmaster of the lycee, and several other people.Nevertheless we pushed ahead, and the deputy-headmaster agreed to recruit some participants from the‘premiere’ (the penultimate year of the lycee) for our training. The day before it was scheduled to take place we went to the lycee to check everyone was ready, and the deputy-head confessed that he was busy evaluating trainee teachers and hadn’t got round to inviting anyone. We put the training off for a couple of days and were becoming more and more convinced it was never going to happen.Eventually it got pushed to Good Friday, and as it’s a national holiday my national volunteer and I decided that no-one would come, especially when Maga got hit by a fierce sandstorm. We decided to show up anyway, to thank and send away the few students who might turn up.When we arrived, sand in our mouths, we were greeted by a student who took us over to a classroom. Forty students had showed up, beyond all our expectations, including six girls, who are in a massive minority at the lycee. They were all about my age, between eighteen and twenty-five, and I started off with a question, to provoke some discussion.“Why,” I asked, “is it important to go to school?”A hand in the back row shot up.“School is important not just because we hope to get a big job when we finish. We’re Cameroonians, we know that it’s hard to get a job and many of us will be unemployed. But school can give us culture, it can help us think, it can give us opportunities.”The other students were all nodding along. And I knew that the project was going to work out.The next day eight enthusiastic teams of students went out into eight areas of Maga to visit households and ask parents if their children were at school, and if not, why not. They went to hundreds of households and spoke to parents who send their daughters into marriage and their sons out in fishing boats or to guard the animals. They busted myths about school fees, asked why children drop out of school, and came back at the end of the day bursting with enthusiasm and stories.Not a single participant mentioned money.Also, several Cameroonians have been kind enough to congratulate me on this special day for my country! Although I was unable to make it to Yaounde to the official screening of the royal wedding for the British Community hosted by the British High Commission, You Tube has filled in the gap.