Memories of the war

Sometimes I forget that Sierra Leone experienced a brutal civil war in the not too recent past. People here are generally so hopeful and focused on future plans for development and improvement in the country that I can forget the tragedy that affected everyone here. Although it sometimes comes up in conversation, people here don’t talk often about the war, and I generally don’t ask many questions in order not to pry into something that may be very difficult for people to talk about. Also, since this is my first time in Sierra Leone, I have nothing to compare it to in terms of how the war changed things here. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between what was destroyed by war and what has deteriorated due to neglect.

Two days ago, Mary Hawa Turay, co-founder of cdpeace, arrived in Sierra Leone for a visit (she is still living in Canada). As we were driving back from Freetown together, she talked about some of the changes she could see due to the war, and some of the things the communities I’m working in have experienced. One thing she mentioned was the state of people’s houses. Before the war, the houses used to be bigger and better constructed – whole compounds with several buildings and a wall around where families lived together. Unfortunately, many homes were destroyed during the conflict. Throughout the country you can see the remains of buildings, still charred from being burnt to the ground. When people had to flee their homes as the fighting advanced, they left everything behind, and in most cases lost it all. Although people have been able to build new homes, they are working with much less than they had, and the houses now tend to be smaller and less solidly constructed.

The two chiefdoms in which I’m primarily working (Gbonkolenken and Paki Masabong) were really affected by the war, Gbonkolenken more so. Mary told me that when the rebels were advancing through the country from the south, when they came to the villages in Gbonkolenken chiefdom (which is essentially right in the middle of the country), the people of Gbonkolenken were one of the first groups to put up real resistance to the rebel advance. Because of this, the rebels decided to punish them – many people were killed and injured. Children were kidnapped. People were forced to commit atrocities (raping, killing, maiming) against their family, friends and neighbours. Whole villages were destroyed and burnt to the ground, so much so that there was nothing left. In the village of Mathombo, school children and adults were locked inside the school and it was set on fire. Many people died. The foundations of that school are still visible in the Mathombo community (Mathombo school is one of the cdpeace pilot schools and has just recently been rebuilt by cdpeace with the support of donors from Canada). Mary said that after the rebels made an example of Gbonkolenken, other villages throughout the north surrendered to them more easily.

I repeat these stories not to dwell on the terror and destruction of the war, but to contrast that with the current climate of hope I see here, and to remember what Sierra Leoneans have experienced. In the face of the devastation of the war that was really so recent (the war began in 1991 and was declared officially over in 2002), it is even more admirable and inspirational to me that the people I have met here now live so peacefully together and that their focus is so strongly on bringing development to the country. Of course there are many challenges here, and a lot of work to be done, but it is obvious to me how much people here are ready to move beyond what happened to them during the war and work hard to build a peaceful and prosperous country. It's pretty impressive.

School twinning

This week I received the first letters from schools in Canada that are twinned with schools here in Sierra Leone. I received three letters, all from grade 6 classes, and all from schools in Nova Scotia. The letters were from Mount Edward Elementary School, twinned with SLMB Primary School in Mabarr Line, Gbonkolenken Chiefdom; from Madeline Symonds Middle School, twinned with Makambray Community Primary School in Makambray, Paki Masabong Chiefdom; and from Shannon Park School, twinned with Mapaki Primary School in Mapaki, Paki Masabong Chiefdom. A few photos of the Sierra Leone classes are posted online in the school twinning album.

Doing the twinning visits was a lot of fun. I visited all the schools in Sierra Leone this week to share the letters. It was really interesting to share information with the schools here, and find out from them what they wanted to share with and ask their new Canadian friends. Generally, for ease of understanding with translation and in order to make sure the content is as relevant and interesting as possible, I don’t read the letters exactly word for word. Instead I share the main ideas in the letters, and any questions the Canadian students have asked their twinned school. The Canadian students at each school shared a lot of the same information in their letters: games and sports they enjoyed, subjects they studied at school, and how they spent their free time. They asked questions of the Sierra Leonean students about what the country was like, the seasons, the animals, and any famous people here.

The schools here in Sierra Leone were very interested in the letters and seemed happy that students in Canada were thinking of them. Some of the students asked me to ask the Canadian students to visit them here, eager to get to know their new friends better. Students here were curious about students in Canada as well. They asked about the weather in Canada, the food, if students liked to play the same games and sports as them, and if they had farms. Generally in the twinning visits I focus on sharing similarities between the students rather than differences. Also, the focus of the twinning is on friendship and sharing, and not on material support, although in many cases the Canadian schools do raise money to support our work with schools here.

I have already sent the reply letters back to Canada and am looking forward to another round of twinning visits. I think it’s a great for students in both countries to learn more about each other and about global issues in general through the twinning process. Peaceful Schools International is right now in the process of examining how we can expand the twinning program. There’s been a lot of interest in school twinning, both from schools in Canada and the US and from developing countries as well. The main challenge is the distribution and interpretation of letters in developing countries. In many cases, schools don’t have access to computers or to the internet to be able to receive letters that way, and the mail systems are often not reliable. The twinning program in Sierra Leone works because there is a volunteer here available to receive the letters that come by email and take them to the schools. Once we figure out this challenge, PSI hopes to be able to implement a more comprehensive twinning program for our member schools from all around the world.

If you want to find out more about PSI's twinning work, please see:
http://peacefulschoolsinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=89&Itemid=117
http://peacefulschoolsinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=90&Itemid=86
http://cvangurp.googlepages.com/schooltwinningactivities

The week that was

As you can probably tell from the lack of posts this week, it’s been a bit of a busy week. We had a visitor in Mapaki for 3 days, Anne-Reed, who works with Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL). She is here in Sierra Leone visiting libraries and scouting for a possible expansion of FAVL’s work into Sierra Leone. She was looking at the cdpeace community library in Mapaki as an example of a community library here.

TMT, cdpeace’s Executive Director, has just arrived back in the country, so we had several meetings this week to confirm plans for my next couple of months here. I will continue with my school visits and teacher training (our first teacher workshop is coming up this Sunday). The twinning program is getting started, with the first letter having gone out to schools in Canada already, so I will have school twinning work to do as well. I am also hoping to do a needs assessment with staff in the next couple of weeks now that TMT is here.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here almost 6 weeks already and have only a little over two months left. Suddenly it seems as though there’s a lot to do in the next 9 weeks. In addition to my cdpeace work, I am hoping to start my interviews for my thesis research this week. I have been waiting for the final approval from the ethics board on some revisions to my questions, and I need to get more copies of the consent forms made. Unfortunately, I have not been successful thus far in getting the printer in Mapaki working, so that means if I want to print or copy something I have to do it either at the cdpeace office in Mayagba or in Makeni or Magburaka. But now I think everything is in place and I will be starting this weekend.

On the topic of research, I had an interesting conversation with one of the people who is going to help me with translation, a friend form Mapaki, Michael. I reviewed the questions and the letter of information about the research with him to make sure he understood everything. For the most part it was fine. However, I had some difficulty explaining to him the concept of research ethics and what it meant to have ethics approval from the university. The gap between the requirements of academia in the developed world, and the understanding and knowledge of people here was evident and it seems silly to even have to include this information for people here I will be interviewing, as it really has no meaning for them. But, as the ethics board requires it, I will proceed as planned :-)

I’m in Makeni today and tomorrow and then doing the first teacher workshop on Sunday, so probably no posts for the next couple of days.

Maso and Makamray school opening - September 18

I have been meaning to post the post below for some time – it was written a while ago, but I forgot to post it. The school openings took place September 18, so a few weeks ago now. More to come tomorrow on today’s World Teachers Day celebration in Mapaki.

Yesterday I attended the opening of two new schools, primary schools in the communities of Maso and Makamray (both in the Paki Masabong Chiefdom) - photos are at http://picasaweb.google.ca/clarepoulev/MakamrayAndMasoSchoolOpening#. The schools were built by Plan (formerly Foster Parents Plan) Sierra Leone with funds from Plan Japan. I went with the Chief, who was speaking at both events.

Each school is a building with six classrooms (for classes 1 - 6) and an administrative area. Along with the school building, Plan also builds a latrine and a well for use by students. This is important because schools must have these facilities in order to get approved by government for support. In addition to the buildings, Plan also provided some basic educational materials (e.g. text books) as it is difficult for schools to get these. Plan also provides some scholarships for students, to help with fees and costs (although there are no school fees at the primary level, the required books and uniforms cost money), and for teacher training. PSI and cdpeace provide similar scholarships, and these two schools were involved last year in our school twinning project as well.

Both openings were similar – the communities, students and teachers were waiting to greet us with song when we arrived. The first opening began about an hour late, and the second one was then late as well. The late starting time is fairly typical here. Each opening included speeches by the Chairman of the Teacher’s Council, the Paramount Chief of Paki Masabong, representatives from the district council, the national government, and the school management committee, and by Plan staff.

At both openings, the children from the school performed a few short skits and songs. The skits were cute. In Makamray the skit was focused on allowing all children to attend school. The kids in Makamray also sang a song, directed at the government officials present that included a request to approve the school. Both Maso and Makamray are community schools, so they currently get no support from government. Now that they have school buildings, latrines and wells, they can apply to become a government-supported school. This would give them some support for teacher salaries (for those who are certified teachers) and some support in terms of books and learning materials.

In Maso, the skit the kids did was about HIV/AIDS prevention. They talked about safe sex, about ensuring that any needles and razors used are clean or sterilized, and about getting tested for HIV. They also sang a song about protecting yourself from HIV using the “ABC” method: abstinence, be faithful and use a condom. While AIDS is not as big of a problem here in Sierra Leone as it is in other parts of Africa, the song and skit was a reminder that it is present here too.

A few stats on HIV in Sierra Leone from UNAIDS (http://www.unaids.org/en/CountryResponses/Countries/sierra_leone.asp). In 2008. an estimated 55,000 people were living with HIV in the country, a prevalence rate of 1.7%. There were approximately 3,300 deaths due to AIDS, and 16,000 children orphaned due to AIDS. Of course, data collection is a challenge here, so it’s a bit hard to say how reliable these statistics are (for example, the estimate on AIDS orphans ranges between 6,400 and 26,000).

Some colleagues who work in hospitals in Makeni have told me that they think that the official prevalence rate is an underestimate based on their own experiences. Given how prevalence data is collected, this could definitely be the case. From what I understand, prevalence of HIV is usually estimated primarily by testing pregnant women who present at clinics for prenatal care and extrapolating that data to the population at large. There are a few problems with this approach in Sierra Leone:
1. Many pregnant women here never go to a clinic for a variety of reasons.
2. Taking a quick look at the map of testing sites in Sierra Leone shows that they are highly concentrated in Freetown, with a few in the south and east of the country. There are none near Makeni or anywhere in Northern Province, except one in Kambia District.

If you are interested in learning more about HIV/AIDS in Sierra Leone, take a further look at the UNAIDS website link above.

Some links of interest

Sorry for the relatively few blog posts lately. I’m in Makeni for a week and have been having some problems with the internet connection here. I’m in Makeni for Krio language training. I’m staying with Heidi (another cdpeace volunteer who lives in Makeni) and I’m working out of the UN office (they have an office available to NGOs). The internet connection here hasn’t been that reliable unfortunately, but I am enjoying the air conditioning!

More posts coming soon! In the meantime, here are a few links that might be of interest.

An article written by the staff of Newport Sports Management – a Canadian business that donated the funds to rebuild the Mathombo school here in Sierra Leone.
http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/27952-.html

Article about state of tourism in Sierra Leone:
http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/spip.php?article4561

An article on the current health situation in Sierra Leone:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/22/sierra-leone-human-rights-emergency

More information about Amnesty International’s new campaign in Sierra Leone to reduce maternal morality (I attended the campaign launch event in Makeni – more about that to come):
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/maternal-death-rate-sierra-leone-quothuman-rights-emergencyquot-20090921

Schools in Sierra Leone

Now that I have visited a number of schools in Gbonkolenken and Paki Masabong chiefdoms, I’d like to describe them a little bit for you. All of the schools I have visited so far are in rural parts of the country. They are generally all community schools, meaning that they are not run by the government. Some of them receive government support to pay some of the teachers’ salaries, especially in the secondary schools, but most receive insufficient support, or none at all.

Many of the school buildings are built by either ministries (Adventist and Catholic are two that I saw), by NGOs (two communities near Mapaki have new schools that opened officially today that were built by Plan), or by the community (for example, the old school in Makambray – the one whose roof blew off). The buildings are then turned over to the community to care for them.

The schools I have met with range in size from about 250 to 700 students. Class sizes are large, generally around 40-50 students per class. The official government policy is a maximum of 50 students per class, but you do see classes bigger than that. In one secondary school we visited in Mathombo, last year they had 400 students and cold only get 4 teachers. Imagine that, 100 students to a class. Definitely makes it more difficult for the students to learn.

For primary school, students pay no official fees to attend school. However, there are other associated costs, like uniforms, shoes and books, that can present a financial barrier to attendance. Once students reach the Junior Secondary (JSS) and Senior Secondary levels, there are fees just to attend. These fees are in the range of between 210,000 LE and 420,000 LE per year, and the books and uniforms these students require are in addition to that. Also, in many cases there isn’t a senior secondary school located nearby, so a student from a rural community would also have to pay room and board to attend school in one of the bigger centres.

From what I can see, and what I understand from others, the majority of teachers are untrained. Very often they have only a high school education, with no formal post-secondary training. Sometimes they have a post-secondary degree in a subject area (e.g. math) but no training in teaching. One big reason why teachers are not able to get qualified is that there is no way possible for them to afford the training. Those teachers who do earn a salary would receive between 150,000 to 300,000 LE per month (about $45 to $90) depending on their qualifications and years of experience teaching. With a bag of rice to feed a family costing about 100,000 LE, there isn't anything left over at the end of the month. Many of the teachers I have talked with do not receive a salary of any kind, and work completely as unpaid volunteers. Some of them have been teaching 6 or 7 years without being paid at all. Later, in thinking about this, I asked Kouame why he thought the teachers were willing to work for no salary. He said that they saw that there was a need for teachers and they valued education. The children needed to learn, and there was no one to teach them, so these volunteer teachers stepped in.

The government now intends to pay teachers once the community schools go through an approval process. However, government will only pay teachers who are formally trained and have a teaching certificate, so this remains a challenge for many of the current teachers. There simply aren't anywhere near enough qualified teachers in the country to meet the need.

As is evident from all this, the educational system here is struggling. However, at all of the community meetings I have been at so far, people have mentioned the importance of education for their children. For example, the women’s groups I met with in Gbonkolenken spoke about the importance of being able to earn income to support school fees for their children. There seems to be a great desire and interest among all people in improving their level of knowledge and education, regardless of the obstacles.

This is one of the reasons cdpeace and PSI are working on education issues here. We do this in a few different ways:
- scholarships for teachers that cover the costs for teachers to attend the teacher training college part-time and through distance learning and get their teaching certificate;
- scholarships for students to help support their fees and costs at school, especially at the secondary level;
- training workshops in basic teaching skills for teachers;
- some funding from our CIDA project also assisted with the repair and reconstruction of some schools.

Alleviating the financial burden on families and being able to properly train and pay teachers would result in a big improvement in education in the country.