School

Note: so I wrote this a few days ago when I thought I'd have regular internet access. Then, I couldn't connect for five days. Turns out I didn't have credit on the right line and was too stupid to figure that out before wasting a morning on the phone with customer service. So, I'm back. But these thoughts are a few days old.


There are two écoles primaires in my village: a private Catholic school and a public one. The Catholic school is part of a larger compound, with the church, the sisters’ dispensary and the daycare center nearby. It’s new and doesn’t differ much in style from the schools I worked at in France (the exception being that the rooms and windows open to the outside, a characteristic ill-suited for Normandy winters). The Catholic school’s familiar construction makes it obvious that it was built with foreign, donated funds; a sign says as much if you need confirmation.

The public school, well, until a few days ago, I didn’t know what it looked like. Maybe it’s because my host family is Catholic. Or because ML~ is largely Catholic. Maybe it’s because my counterpart, who is Muslim, sends his kids to the Catholic school. Or maybe it’s just because the Catholic school is at the entry to the village, the public school being considerably farther away. For whatever reason, after two months in ML~, I’d never set foot in the public school. At the same time, I walk by the Catholic school almost daily, have attended a meeting or two there – I’ve been introduced to all the teachers.

But my community is not homogenous. This is Senegal, a Muslim country: in villages where they don’t dominate, the Muslims still have a presence. There is a mosque directly on the village square (even if it is a good deal less impressive than the church, funded as it is by generous Catholics once again living outside of Senegal.

And so this week I made “non-Catholic” the theme of my visits in ML~, hopefully distinguishing me from some of the other well-meaning toubabs who come here on vacation. I stopped by the imam (who I had visited) and the public school (which I had not).

The public school is not as impressive as its Catholic counterpart, but mimics the French style all the same in an older, crumblier manner. There are more students and fewer teachers. And I have to walk pretty damn far to get there, greeting what seems like the entire village en route. But, lo and behold, there, hiding under my very nose, I found the potential for my first mini-project. I found something to keep me from dying (read: ETing) of boredom in January, something I’m actually already inherently capable of doing, even before February’s In-Service Training. L’informatique, which we can define here as teaching basic computer skills.

It turns out that once upon a time in the last ten years, someone (the state? renegade Catholics?) donated an old desktop computer to the public school. It sits there in the principal’s office unused, collecting dust because it’s old, because it uses up the solar-charged battery that people would rather use for their cell phones, because the five teachers really don’t know how to use it.

The directeur has got ideas for how they should use it: namely for writing up tests and texts (enter Microsoft WORD stage right) and calculating scores and averages (enter Microsoft EXCEL stage left). Then, once someone (not me) finds the funds to buy an ink cartridge, the star of the show – the printer – can be used to save the teachers the hassle of writing everything by hand. No joke: they write every test, every class roster by hand. Take a minute to get over the brain freeze induced by that notion of inefficiency.

So, there you have it. With any luck, I have something to do at least two days a week starting in January. I just have to
a) find a free non-internet-based typing/general computer learning program in French;
b) overcome the Senegalese habit of being late or absent for any agreed upon, fixed rendez-vous; and
c) overcome my aversion to the creepy directeur, who sees no problem giving entirely unprofessional flattery to someone young enough to be his daughter.

This is my first mini-project, though: conditions, shmonditions.