Schools

K: I visited a school set up by some friends in the development community many months ago. Chad has a generally miserable public education system, but there are few private schools that are decent. Many parents home school their children, as there are so many teachers unemployed (though schools need twice the number of teachers, they can barely pay the ones they have - or at least they only choose to pay that many), and then you have the question of Arabic or French, or, increasingly, English. Even though everyone speaks one of a hundred or so languages at home...

I went to the end of year ceremony for two of my friends' schools and saw performances by children and awards for kids. The performances were impressive - the kids had definitely been practicing hard. The awards were nice too, since the children came forward, received small scholastic, fun items like crayons and notepads, and then the parents came forward and raised their children into the air. The look of pride on their faces gave everyone a good feeling.

The schools are not located in the city, but about 30 minutes outside in the countryside. They are in very poor areas without much infrastructure and certainly no public schools. The schools that our friends built were basically a single small concrete building to store things and then several classrooms of poles holding up thatch roofs with thatch walls - no door, no window, no desks, no chairs. The teacher stands and writes on a chalkboard propped against a pole and the students sit on the ground. It was very basic, but it worked, and you could see the results in this ceremony.

It's not very often that you see development actually working, but this was definitely it. Having motivated, independent organizers, who have lived in the country for decades putting together a village school out of a few thousand dollars is what it takes. The money is not the problem, but having the right people is. Girls and boys, Africans and Arabs and everyone in between, all learning to read and write in a poor area is quite impressive, given the need for children to work to offset their cost, and the usual village politics that usually end splitting along ethnic lines.

Hooray for bright spots in Chad, where the norm is usually bleak.