Forgot to post that these are my personal opinions and do
not in anyway reflect the opinions of Peace Corps or the United States
government. Some of them aren’t even my personal opinions. There. Hope that
works.
I have been in Liberia for two weeks, at my site, Bahn, for
one, and all of it has been a whirlwind. I have barely rested – there are so
many people to meet, and my principal is a man of action. Gbarkenah
(Bar-ken-eh) is from Bahn, but was living in Monrovia when the Ministry of
Education, under the new president Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, asked him to return
to his town to take over the school here. Mr. Koboi, the Vice Principal of
Student Affairs, has a similar story. So many were displaced during the war,
and only recently those who studied at University have started to return to
their towns to work. Students range from 17 to over 40. Older students want
education too, and because there is no electricity (or anyone to administrate),
there can be no night classes. Schoolhouses have been destroyed or neglected,
and teachers have been killed or taken refuge in Monrovia and the United
States. Now, after 9 years of peace, education is recognized as the key to
Liberia’s progress.
Gbarkenah studied Math and Economics and taught for many
years, and when he says he wants to turn the school in Bahn into a modern
educational environment, I believe him. His ideas include turning un-used
classroom space into department offices for instructors to work as a team in
order to plan their lessons, grade their papers, and provide help to students
when they come for it. This, he says, will make the students’ level higher –
because the classrooms are so crowded, teachers cannot help students
individually (my two 10th grade classes will have at least 75
students each. The registrar has not yet come, so I still don’t have class
rosters). The students say it is not their fault if they fail, because the
teachers do not help them. The teachers then take pity and pass students who
should otherwise fail. If begging doesn’t work, you can still pay or sleep with
your teacher. My principal, at least, seems to realize the danger in passing
students who don’t know the subject, and for the rest of the community, we will
see.
Gbarkenah is a stickler for the rules, and if a girl comes
to class with her hair unplaited, he threatens to send her home (though I
haven’t seen him actually send a girl home – it’s only the first week so maybe
he’s giving them a little time). The students also wear uniforms: everyone in
white button-downs, the girls in skirts and the boys in pants, color-coded
according to their year. Freshmen and sophomores wear green; juniors and
seniors wear burgundy, with the seniors all wearing ties that stop about
halfway down their chests.
It’s a bit odd for the principal to insist on such order,
when the rest of the school is barely standing. I am teaching two sections of
10th grade and one of 11th, and none of my classrooms
have enough seating room. In my 10th B classroom, there is one ~4 square
feet chalkboard on the wall in the darkest corner of the room. The students
crowd together in haphazard rows, literally on top of one another. There is a
larger board at the back of the huge room, but when I asked about using it
instead, the principal told me it would be too much trouble to have the
students move the tables and desks around. Too much disorder, he said. Both of
the boards are only warped planks that have been painted black, and after much
use of “hard” chalk, lessons have been permanently scratched into the wood,
making it even harder to read my writing. The buildings themselves have deep
holes in the concrete floors, and nothing has been so much as swept in probably
months. Girls carry their donuts and pineapple to sell during class, and those
damn plastic baggies are everywhere, along with dust, spider webs, and cheap
notebook paper. The computer lab, with 15 dusty computers, sits unused because
the school’s generator doesn’t work. There is no computer teacher anyway, and
if there was, no time to fit the classes in: elementary students use the
building in the morning, and high school students attend from 1:00 to 6:00 with
a 30 minute break. They’re required to have language arts, literature, math,
history, biology, chemistry, and physics every year.
During this first week of classes, the schedule has been
changed three times in the week, but no one adheres to it anyway since there
are still so many missing teachers. Only about a third of the teachers have
come to school. Classes start at 1:00 and my first is supposed to be at 1:45,
but if there is a room with no teacher I’m supposed to just jump right in and
start teaching. Then, if the instructor does show up, he can either kick me out
or wait and teach after me. Or, of course, he can just say “someone’s in there”
and go sit in the teacher’s lounge, or go home. At first, Mr. Payne, who was
teaching all the English classes before I arrived, was on campus regularly. I
asked him a couple of times to bring me his notes so I could pick up where he
left off. But he has disappeared now, and after glancing through a student’s 3
pages of English notes – 3 pages for an entire semester – I’ve decided to start
afresh. Apparently Mr. Payne is in Ganta, the closest banking town, but many
teachers and administrators haven’t been paid all year. Some blame the Ministry
of Education; others have told me that the banks take civil servants’ money to
“speculate.”
I hear that the
students are eager to learn, and so far it appears to be so. I have heard “thank
you for coming” at least twice for every hand that I’ve shaken. Students,
teachers, and townspeople: everyone tells the principal “thank you for bringing
her.” I’ve walked through the town twice, and my principal made the
announcement that students were always welcome at my house, a bit of a shock to
me. Most of the older people remember Peace Corps from before the war, and
those who are too young to remember are probably just coming to beg a better
grade, but for now it at least feels as though they’re glad I’m here.
Amazing. I should share your post with some educators I know. Glad people are responding well to you. Hope you're comfortable, happy and safe. Miss you!
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