Saturday 11 April – Day 19

I wanted to write more of an account of the interview yesterday about education in the area. Addo has been going to classes in Kafountaine every day for the past year, but has stopped now despite the classes being free to attend. Her husband has been supporting her attendance financially by paying for the bush taxis to get there in the nearest town. But he can’t afford to pay any longer. She says she also needs the time to make lunch, as the classes are in the mornings, from 9-12am.

There is currently no school in Abene like the one she goes to in Kafountaine. She thinks it would be a good idea to have one here in Abene. I talked to her about the cost of building a school in Abene, and we discussed the pros and cons. The problems for women attending school out of Abene is time taken away from child care and cooking. There is also the cost of transport. Children can be left with other family members, but it is a greater burden on the family when the mother is away from the house longer. I’m not sure what happens regarding making lunch when she goes to school though.

From a western perspective with generally good public transport systems, widespread car ownership, good roads, bikes in good working order and western-style taxis, travelling the few kilometres to school in Kafountaine doesn’t sound like such a big deal. But Addo explains to me that she sometimes has to wait over an hour, maybe two for a bush taxi in the morning from Abene to Kafountaine, costing 200F or pay 1,000F to go sooner, without waiting for the car to be full with 6 other people paying the same fare of 200F each. And then when she gets to the taxi garage she has to wait for another bush taxi which costs comparitively much more at 1,000F as it is off of the usual route people take. The journey to school and back can be as much as 4,000F – that’s more than my daily budget of £5, a huge expense for her. I am impressed that her husband has supported her going to school for so long.

The bush taxis here follow routes like we in the west would be used to as a bus route, but they won’t leave until these 7 seater cars on their last legs are full, unless you pay for the whole car yourself which is very expensive. You can wait a long time for a car to be full and depending on your jouney it may not go directly to your destination, so you have to repeat the process of waiting for another car somewhere along the way. And then the roads are so bad that in this area, until you get across a river on the way to Bignona, past Diolulu, where there is tarmac it is so full of pot holes that cars normally drive along side the tarmac in the dirt track, sometimes with one wheel up on the tarmac and the other in the sand.

To summarise the problems women here face in getting to school despite availability of free classes when they are in another town are finding child care, taking time away from making meals for the family, the long time it can take to get to school and back and the cost of transport.

I discussed the possibility of having a bus laid on for free to take women from the local areas in to school directly to Kafountaine. Compared to the high cost of building a school this could be a lot more accessible to fund. I will look into the this idea and see if it could be feasible.

Addo and Boubacar told me about the 2 schools in Kafountaine, one called Satandaba where you can study for diplomas which lead to jobs in hotels and is fee paying, at 1,000F a month, £1.43 at the current exchange rate of 700 cents to £1. The other school is the one which Addo attends, called Jackie School. Classes there are free and they provide course books free of charge. Jackie School have classes in computer studies, batik, cooking, and languages including Spanish, German and English. Addo says they are a big association, which I think means it is an NGO. I will arrange to visit both these schools and try to find out how they operate to gain further information for the assessment and see how Abene Karantaa can be most effective in the area for a sustainable and empowering improvement in educational provision in the area.

I went out to get bread for a chocopain sarnie and a cup of café Touba this morning and discovered a woman selling veggie baguettes for breakfast near the shop I but bread from just open the road my compound is on. I checked about 5 times in French that there wasn’t any meat or fish in the doughy looking balls she had in her dish. I later found they are Akaraa, bean cakes according to my dictionary. I’d call them bean balls rather than cakes, though which bean they’re made from I’ve no idea, and Boubakar says there isn’t a name for them in French. So I may never find out which bean it is. It was a tasty alternative to my usual chocolate spread baguette. I came back again later with my blue plastic cup and the left over Gloria (unsweetened condensed milk) from yesterday morning) and sat on the bench next to Yousofa. I exchanged all the usual greetings with Dei and the men standing around or propping up the wall around her. You don’t see many women hanging around like the men do! Their free time tends to be in the afternoons from what I have seen, when they dress up in their gorgeous bright African outfits (one of which I am now a proud owner of, and am keen to get more!). They go out a walk into the village, or visit people perhaps.

The TV is almost always on when I come to Sainey’s, and that’s when I see flip-flop after flip-flop, a sea of them by the door on my way in! And when there’s a programme on the kids watch, there’ll be lots of little flip-flops outside the door! And when I come out after, one of my flip-flops may be in a different place, apart from the other, or sitting on the wall. But then it will be switch off and everyone goes out, not like in Britain where it could be left on for hours perhaps. Sainey’s wife (I think) just came in from outside (the back door) and I exchanged greetings with her. How are you? I am here. Are you at peace? Peace only. Where are your people? They are there. …I’ve since been ‘interrupted’ and greeted three people, one asked me where my husband was! I said I don’t have one. How is it? It’s good! Did you wake up in peace? Yes indeed. And it goes on and on!

I had a good look at the school at Kariba Dianna, when I sat in on the class with Mousso Tamba the other day. If we are to build a school we will need to know what materials to use and how to plan the structure. The architects What Architecture in London have been working on designs and idea for me for our planned building in Abene, and have requested photos and observations. The building Moussou teaches in, a state owned school she uses after hours, looks to be made of mud brick and mud plaster, no cement. Cement only in the foundations, with a sand floor, no concrete there. No door, but a raised step between the outside and the room inside. The whole building is above ground level, as are most of the buildings I’ve seen I think. My round house where I sleep is raised too, perhaps for the rains in the rainy season. The windows are open square holes, some with wood frames covered in corrugated iron wedged into the spaces. The roof is of what looks to be the cheapest available wood is it palm wood maybe? And covered in corrugated iron. There are 6 blackboard panels in a row along on side, near the door. Seating is two people sized wooden benches with tables fixed to them. Rows and rows facing the backboards with the teacher at the front in a traditional format.

I’ve heard there is a European man who wants to build a school in Abene, but that he is not here at the moment, I think he’s back in Europe. I will try to get contact details for him and see how he is getting on. It is encouraging that there are others working to improve education provision in Abene. I wonder when the will be up and running and how they will work.

I chatted to Yousofa over my second coffee in the morning. I was so good I went back again for more! One guy said I would miss it when I go back to the UK. I think he’s right. I don’t drink coffee at all back home, but this is good. Yousofa and I are going to cycle to Kafountaine in the afternoon, not too early as the sunburn on my back is still sore. Foolish me going one day without sun cream. I fancy seeing how long it will take to get to Kafountaine and getting a bit of exercise too. The waves in the sea are a bit too high for serious swimming. But great fun for jumping into! I miss my long cycles from South London in to work in Old Street every day. The cycling experience isn’t quite the same here, every thing moves slower in the heat, with the relaxed speed of life and the poor roads. When I’m hungry or tired and walk faster to get home quicker, Aziz tells me not to be in such a hurry, slow down!

I think Yousofa is my best allie so far in terms of conducting the assessment. When he’s not working repairing cars he seems to have the time to accompany me places and speaks French, Mandinka, Jola and not bad English, with a stutter. He’s kind hearted from what I know of him and a trusted friend of the family in the compound. Samba is always busy doing stuff, going up and down in his truck, but hopefully will have a chance to introduce me to some key people in the village before he heads of to the UK for his annual trip.

There’s a famous Senegalese musician playing in Kafountaine tonight, Titi I think and others. I asked Boubakar if he was going but he says he hasn’t got the money, it’s expensive at 5,000F, over £7, plus the taxi fare of course, which could be expensive in the evening, getting there and back. I can wait till the Abene Music Festival in December!

Addo and I had a chat about marriage yesterday around the fire, as the water for me to wash with was heating up. She said she has seen a white European women marry an African man here and live as an African woman, cooking, cleaning, etc and wearing African clothes as she does. She says it’s not obligatory if you marry here as a white woman, but it’s nice. Addo and I are getting on well. She helped me work out the family tree, where evryone in the compound here and in Bignona fitted in, a complex web that only featured mothers and brothers and sisters, not fathers. Indicative of the role they play in the family I think. And the complexities of many women having children by more than one father, and the men even more so it seems. It’s quite confusing, but now on day 19, I’m getting to grips with it!

…Later in the day (I write this now at Sainey’s the following day)… I went for a bike ride with Yousoufa in to Kafountine in the afternoon. I needed the exercise. I was really tired in the evening and we made Sankhal together, a kind of rice pudding made of millet, with condensed milk and sugar, I add a couple of chopped up banabas for good measure. Nice and filling after a long cycle ride. Yousoufa corrected me when I put the millet in the cold water before it had boiled. It needs to be added once the water is boiling, and stirred constantly till it gets thick, the left to boil on it own for a few minutes. Dish up, add the Gloria condensed milk on top and sugar, two spoons, eating from same bowl. I asked Yousoufa about people having their own eating space. I’d read about it in the cultural notes in the Gambian Mandinka course book that I still have on loan from Danko. Is it just in the Gambia, or here too that it’s considered rude to venture in to someone else’s eating space, their own semi-circle they carve out in the bowl. It’s not just Gambia, but here too. I respect his space in the bowl. He eats less than me and I finish it all off! It’s been a long day. He says he’ll meet me later to go to the free disco down the road, the usual disco is 500F and not many people were there last time I went a fortnight agao, Aziz said it was because out of the tourist season people don’t have the money to pay to get in. I saw some people drinking there, but Aziz and Babakar didn’t have a thing, being practising muslims.

Today was very interesting in terms of generating information for the assessment, and making good contacts. On the ride in from Abene, Yousoufa stopped off to say hello to a friend in the neighbouring village Dianna. The English woman who lives at the house with her Senegalese husband has built a grass roofed mud brick hut on the land and is opening as an English language school with free classes for 10-18 year olds. She says however that she has already gone over her budget, had money promised to her from the UK, but wasn’t seen all she expected to get. She’s now hoping to earn some money enough to but food for herself and the others in the house until she goes back to the UK in just over six week’s time to work over the summer, before coming back again. Hawa (known as Louise in the UK) uses her African name. I haven’t decided on one for myself yet! I like Aminata, but Aziz says I’d have to become a Muslim as it’s a Muslim name. But I’m pantheist, so I have to find another name. I had some suggestions from Boubakar number 3 at Dei’s café Touba stand this morning, but none sound like me yet! I’ll find one.

Hawa is very chatty and we stay talking for an hour. She tells me all about her plans and her anxiety now the registration days she has advertised get closer. I tell her I’d be happy to volunteer and teach English with her, we’ll see how it goes and what the needs are. Perhaps we’ll team teach, we’ll see. We swop mobile numbers, though she says she never has credit. Not so surprising. Whenever Babakar has credit on his phone he seems to use it all up calling all the friends he hasn’t spoken to, and his girlfriend who he talks about all the time. Then the credit is all gone. The same happens to me when I call the UK. No warning, click, the line goes, you’ve run out of credit. They’re all pay as you go as far as I can see. Not everyone has a bank account to have a standing order monthly payment. You have to have a deposit of £50 to keep a bank account open here apparently. I finally have the photos I need to open an account and hope to do so soon. I’ll have to travel to Kafountine to access my account though, but at least now I know I can get there by bike, it won’t always cost me the taxi fare to get there.

I arrange to see Hawa again on Wednesday, her first registration day. She doesn’t know whether to expect to be inundated and need a ‘bouncer’ or if she’ll be sitting on her tod all day waiting! I’ll keep her company for a bit, from the way we have been chatting already I don’t think we’ll be stuck for conversation. I suggest my charity in the UK, Abene Karantaa might be able to help her by funding the free classes to children. She says she’d love to be able to provide books and thinks she really needs another bench. She was telling me about her experience volunteering in the local school in Abene. The children were so used to a traditional chalk and talk approach that when she brought in group work and games they were all over the place, completely unruly, not knowing how to react to the freedom of the new learning style. It has been good for her to do before starting her own venture. I asked for her introduce me to the teachers in the school, I would like to meet them and sit in and observe classes too.