Repairing the school at Malka (a very encouraging story from Cameroon)
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 30/Sep/2010 17:49, 34 days ago
The primary school in the tiny hamlet of Malka has two classrooms, three rickety desks, one trained teacher sent by the State, three unqualified teachers paid by the parents and RESAEC (VSO’s local partner) and just over three hundred students. Since June it has also had no roof.Parents and teachers building a new classroom in MalkaDuring our planning session at the end of last year the parents at Malka decided that they wanted to build a new classroom for the school out of mud bricks and drew up a budget of 325,000 CFA (about£400). They already had some money saved up as their temporary classroom made from seko (woven dried grass) had been destroyed by roaming cattle and the cattle owners had paid compensation.The loss of the school’s roof in high storm winds was a serious blow to this plan. With no prospect of a permanent new roof in sight the school used its savings to buy seko to use to cover the classrooms, protecting the children from the worst of the sun.When I came on my first visit to the school after the summer holidays I found some of the students playing football outside and others mopping up the rainwater flooding the classroom floors. Meanwhile a group of teachers and fathers was busy constructing a new seko classroom by the side of the school. This is made entirely of local materials- there is a wooden frame made from branches, seko forms the roof and walls, and it is all tied together with leaves. Proudly they agreed that it was better than the previous year’s seko classroom.I was ready to hear the parents say that given they had lost their savings it wouldn’t be possible to build the mud brick classroom this year, but instead they told me they were determined to go ahead from the project. A new initiative they’d decided to introduce at a community meeting we’d held last year meant that 500 CFA from each of the village’s rice fields would be contributed to the school.Another community meeting with the village chief had led to a decision to crack down on parents who hadn’t paid their school fees (for instance taking a chicken or a cooking pot in lieu of missing fees). These harsh measures last year meant that the parents’ association is expecting a high number of parents to pay up quickly this year. The President of the parent’s association also told me thatparents are becoming more willing to get involved with the association (a statement backed up by the fact that several had turned up to build the new seko classroom), and that because of community sensibilisation a record number children are being sent to school.This time last year I was confronted with groups of annoyed villagersdemanding to know why I wasn’t giving them moneyto build classrooms, install electricity, and dig wells. This year I’ve been welcomed back by communities telling me about the projects they’re working on to improve their schools.Also an update:I wrote about Ayissi last year, a boy who was disabled by polio and who's father didn't want to support him. Since then we worked with his mother to get him a birth certificate so he could do his end of primary school exams and now he's starting at the Maga lycee- his mother is cycling him there on her bike every day.