A matter of life and birth
on Notes from Quite Far (Cameroon), 05/Mar/2010 21:39, 34 days ago
Home after a month full of travel, tales of which I will save for another day. This entry is a bit different.To those of you reading this blog who came to our fundraising party over the summer (and to others who contributed and didn’t even get a free hamburger out of it) I would like to extend a massive thank you, and to tell you where I have decided to put your money (£370 in total). I’m not going to tell you straight away though, I’m going to string it out a bit, so if you’re busy you might want to skip to the end.I’ve been deliberating for months now over the best way to spend it all. Initially I thought of buying school resources and equipment for children to use in class. The problem with buying things, however, is that most things don’t last very long, and if they have any market value at all, there’s a good chance they’ll end up - well, on the market.So what can one buy, that children need, that will stay in the right hands and last a long time? The rather cryptic answer will come after the following lengthy commentary on the education system in Cameroon.In principle, state education is free in Cameroon. The government used to allow schools to charge a fee, but this is no longer allowed. Since it is very rare in the north for a school to have the full complement of state-paid teachers, school fees used to be spent on extra staff. And when I say“extra” I suppose what I really mean is “barely sufficient”. Then, several years ago, the World Bank threatened to stop debt relief unless Cameroon provided free education for all its children. And so the government banned school fees and announced publically and with great fanfare that parents would no longer have to pay a penny to send their children to school. This was brilliant, although it did leave many headteachers in a difficult situation, since they still did not have enough teachers, and they were now unable to generate an income to pay more. So a “voluntary” contributionwas introduced to replace the previous compulsory fee. And ever since then, a lot of people have been doing what they call “awareness-raising” among the parents, and basically that means explaining to them that, yes, you can send your kids to school for nothing, but if you want to send them toa school with teachers in it you need to pay. The fee is around £2 per year, which is just about affordable for all but the very poorest families (the more kids the tougher it gets to send them all though, so often a family will stop sending the girls since they’re destined to give birth and keephouse and clearly don’t need qualifications). Often, it’s not that parents can’t pay, more that they are suspicious, since they constantly hear on the radio that school is free. Therefore parents who would gladly have handed over their £2 a few years ago now refuse to do so. And those teachers whose salaries come from parent contributions live below the poverty line and sometimes are not paid for months on end. Furthermore, now that the parent fund is not officially recognised, there is more scope for money to go missing, and such things do occasionally happen.I have been very careful about not using this blog as a soapbox, but this once I am going to indulge myself I am afraid. I’ll try not to overdo it though.Personally I believe education is the right of every child without exception, and not a commodity to be bought and sold. School fees make me angry. Watching children selling peanuts through bus windows when they could be in school makes me angry. I’m glad the World Bank wants free education for the children of Cameroon. Most Cameroonians want the same thing. But being told you’ve got something and actually having it are two different things. Anybody working in schools here will tell you things were better before. Parents paid their fees and if they couldn’t then normally an uncle or brother would step in, and everybody knew where they stood. Almost anybody with a stake in the education system wants compulsory school fees back. It’s a truth I find difficult to stomach.At the end of primary school there is an exam, and if the children pass they are entitled to go on to secondary school (secondary schools are officially allowed to charge fees). The primary school exam certificate is the minimum required by most employers, including the state, so even those children who don’t go on to secondary school have many more doors open to them if they pass their primary school exams. In order to enter however, children need to provide their birth certificate. And this is where things become tricky.Even in the UK I’ve known expectant couples who have put off decorating the nursery or choosing a name, for fear of tempting fate. It’s the same way here only more so. Infant mortality rates in my region are very high and many parents don’t name their babies for several months after birth. And it’s not justa question of tempting fate, it’s also about humility before God. “Insh’Allah” and “If it pleases God” are as much a part of the future tense as “will” and “am going to”. To omit these phrases is viewed as comlacent and presumptuous. So in a town where you can’t even say “see you next Tuesday” without a quick nod to the Almighty, it is easy to see how getting a birth certificate for a new born baby, in the full knowledge that it won’t be needed for at least another 11 years, is not really the done thing. Furthermore, from a very cold-hearted, but realistic point ofview, why spend good money on a birth certificate for a child who might not live to have need of it? Better to leave it for now and cross that bridge when it comes.The problem being that when the bridge finally does come, it’s tricky to cross. Not all families pay attention to birthdays, so the older the child gets, the more approximate his or her age. And even if the family does know the precise date and year of the child’s birth, they still have no way of proving it. So the first thing is to visit a doctor who does medical checks to determine the child’s age. Only after this is done can the parents go to the town hall to have the birth recorded and get that all-important birth certificate. With doctor’s fees and travel costs, getting a birth certificate can set a family back £10 or £15. This is clearly prohibitive, and even the kind uncle who’s been stumping up £2 a year for school fees these past 6 years shakes his head. £15 for a piece of paper? Not on your nelly.Many children never get their birth certificate, never sit their exams, never have an identity recognised by the state, never get a regular job, never vote, never officially exist. Plenty of adults in Yagoua are in this situation, regardless of how bright and capable they are. They also need a birth certificate in order to get an ID card, and it’s a criminal offense not to carry an ID card. Without an ID card here you can’t travel on main roads because there are too many police checkpoints. Every time I travel the bus is stopped by police who check for ID, and if someone has none he or she is taken into a hut and made to pay a fine between 75p and £3, depending on various unknown factors. I’m sure that the police would never hit someone for not having an ID card, or even for not paying their fine if they genuinely can’t afford it, but it still must be intimidating for people in those huts, because the officers carry batons and knives and guns. Other things you can’t do without an ID card include: Buy a mobile phone from the shop, catch a train, send and receive money, get a job with a salary, own property, rent property as an official tenant, report something stolen, press criminal charges against someone, vote, andplenty more besides. It’s not like at home when the only time you need ID is to buy booze from Tesco (hooray I look under 30) or to join Blockbuster Video (whose stringent requirements I have always found quite bizarre by the way).Now you might be thinking that the Cameroonian government is really crippling its own economy by making it so expensive and difficult for its citizens to lift themselves out of poverty, preventing them from getting qualifications and jobs, and from contributing to society. It would be unwise for me to comment on this view that you hold.The bit where I tell you where your money’s going!And so we finally approach the point of the£370 from fundraising. What can I buy that children need, that won’t break or go missing, that can’t be resold, that will stay in the right hands, and that will last a lifetime?And the answer is“an identity”.There is an organisation called the Bethlehem Foundation. It’s based near Maroua, and it helps families all over the Extreme North with the financial and logistical support they need to get birth certificates so that their children can sit their primary school exams. I’m going to give them £300, which will pay for between 20 and 30 children to get theirbirth certificate, and so give them a chance in life they would not otherwise have had. This leaves £70, which I will account for soon. Some of it has gone on school fees for children, but that’s a story for another blog.I’m going to go to the Bethlehem foundation next month when my salary comes through. I’d like to think there’ll be a chance to meet some of the children they’ve helped and post some photos on here. I feel I owe you that much at least. If there are no photo ops, you’ll have to make do with ascan of the receipt when I make the donation. Buying pens and schoolbooks would make better photos, but I feel that donating to the Bethlehem Foundation would be more meaningful. I hope you don’t mind.And that’s it, really. A huge thank you once more from me. And I’d also like to say thank you on behalf of the kids who will be taking their exams in June because of your kindness, but then again it would be presumptuous of me to claim to speak for them. Let’s face it, I’m not Bono. But I feel surethat this is the sort of thing Bono would approve of. So maybe I should thank you on behalf of Bono.To everyone who contributed to the summer fundraising for Cameroon, on behalf of Bono, pop singer and spokesperson for Africa, I’d like to say thank you. Thirty children, who might otherwise have left school without so much as a handshake, will have qualifications and be recognised by the state. As such they’ll have a chance to make a better life for themselves.And as if that’s not good enough, some of you even got a free hamburger.