One Soccer Ball, One School
As we approached Minedub School in the Wum district, our driver Stephen and Madame Oussematou suggested that this would be a good spot to deal with one of the five soccer balls donated by Canadian Tire in Truro. They felt that the children here should be the recipients of the ball because the school is more rural in nature and students are mostly the children of ‘graziers’ whose families tend cattle on the surrounding hillsides. Everything about these grazier people, pretty well their entire socio-economic existence, including their concept of wealth, traditionally is tied up in their cattle. So it’s not surprising for us to hear that their values do not emphasize formal schooling and there is resistance by some to send their children to school (even though school attendance in the Cameroon is supposed to be compulsory through the elementary age levels). The Minedub school they told us was placed here in this more decentralized location away from Wum in an effort to try and make it easier for these children to attend.
Before proceeding further with the “one soccer ball/one school” story, a few words about ‘grazier’ cattle are in order. These are the Zebo breed of tropical cattle which here in northwest Cameroon are the big white cows with that distinctive hump over the shoulder area. We’ve seen a number of really big herds thus far, as many as a couple of hundred head at a time. Another interesting little anecdote about cattle in Bamenda; about 2 or 3 a.m. the other morning Lydia looks out our front room window and in the glare of the sodium iodide streetlight just outside what does she see but one of these large herds of white Zebos filing down commercial avenue heading towards the Hotel Ayaba in a torrential downpour. Oussematou said the graziers often move cattle through Bamenda in this way but always at night. I guess if the Aussie graziers can do it, so too can the Cameroonians!
As we arrived at the school, three teachers came to greet us. The students, all 150 of them, were very curious. A physical education class was underway on the playfield using a tiny, plastic ball, their only ball we were told. Then we informed the teachers that we had a football to present to the school and they quickly made a plan. The Principal of the school was away for a short while and one of the teachers used her cellphone and contacted the principal who said she’d be back momentarily. In the interim, they decided to allow all of the children to line up along the playfield and have the gym class form teams and demonstrate how the new football (i.e. soccer ball in Canada) would be used. The first activity they arranged was to form two lines, girls on one side, boys on the other, with the children arranged tallest to shortest. The gym teacher (probably a ‘circuit rider’ from Wum) came out in her green gym outfit and began to direct operations. The action really began when a goalie was sent to the other end of the field and Lydia was asked to toss the ball into the air (sort of a ‘face off’) and from there, voila, the game began. Can you imagine just how exciting it must be to play with a real soccer ball after playing with a small plastic facsimile of one?
The children entertained us with an impressive game which allowed time for the principal to get back. She arrived on the back of a motorcycle, the most common (and cheapest form of taxi service) in the Cameroon. She took us on a tour of the school which itself consists of the old building and a new one. The basic structure of the new building is quite decent, though rudimentary by our standards. The interior furnishings however are another matter. Apparently the community/parents are responsible for the interior and it is indeed extremely spartan. For instance, within the new structure there is a divider made of cardboard pieces hand-stitched together and separating a tiny office for the principal from the one large classroom. This class room is shared by two groups of about 30 students each, with half the desks facing in one direction and the remaining half in the other. The newer building has windows and concrete floors and the desk materials were provided for and built by the community/parents.
The older and smaller building houses the two youngest age groups and is another matter entirely! Perhaps apart from the desks, these too built by the parents, this structure is in great need of physical improvement, perhaps even complete rebuilding.
The picture on the right is taken in the old school. On the far wall can be seen what is intended to be a window, though for some reason it appears to have been somewhat modified, perhaps to function as a second door? But there is no window frame and for all intents it is not a window. Nor can the doorway (the direction from which the photo is taken) really be considered anything more than a ‘walk-through’, as there is no door or frame. The floor is bare dirt, always dusty and contributes to persistent bronchial problems. The floor is also a source of the ‘zigger’ worm that burrows up into the soles of the children’s feet in certain seasons of the year and is a very painful condition for them. Though there is a roof (of sorts) in place, the classroom is more or less wide open to the elements, wind and rain in wet season, wind, dust and cooler temperatures in dry season, not to mention insects, domestic livestock and other nuisances. Domestic livestock actually wander into the classroom at night and the teachers must clean up the manure droppings from the dirt floor before classes can begin in the morning. The children are like children everywhere and are terrified by the thunder and lightning to which they are so directly exposed in this building. We talked with the principal about this situation and she said it would be good if building materials could be obtained and the necessary improvements effected.
It really bothered us to see about 20 of the children here at Minedub school with distended bellies. On the Monday following our visit there Lydia went to the pharmacy across the street from the IDF office and spoke about the situation there with Dr Nkwenti /Davidson (Ph .D. Pharmacology, University of Washington). We’d met this individual by chance during our first week here when Lydia had asked him a whole lot of questions about the diabetes situation in Cameroon. Now he viewed our pictures and live movie clips and could hear and see the heavy coughing and distended bellies. In response he said that he would contact the Dept. of Health for follow up. Hopefully they will do so and undertake further action as needed.
Second Soccer Ball, Second School
Bana is a village of 10,000 people located three hours south from Bamenda in the West. The breath taking beauty of this region is set in fairly high altitude rainforest terrain at an elevation of about 1000 meters. . The local economy is totally agricultural based and dependent on some extremely infertile soils. The dry season extends from November to March and wet season from April to October. Bana was the location chosen for Allan’s seminar on Conservation Farming (l’Agriculture Naturelle), and Yes, as the spoken language here is French or Pidgin, all of the proceedings were presented by him entirely in French
From a socio-economic viewpoint, the village has two extreme contrasts in the kind of people who live in the West Cameroon. First of all there are a few rich property owners who have made their fortunes elsewhere and have chosen to build lavish estates here in Bana, their home village. The estates are manned by servants and may be occupied by these owners for as little as two weeks per year. Generally speaking, these people seem not to be interested in alleviating, let alone noticing the extreme poverty that surrounds their villas. Most of them seem not to have any interest in trying to help alleviate the desperate conditions that define their village.
But there are exceptions and for these persons ‘Matou’ is thankful! Bana village women were working the farms during the day and leaving their small children to fend for themselves. A man of only modest means chose to donate his property (house and building) for a preschool. We visited the preschool with the intent of leaving soccer ball number two for the children.
The children were busy drawing numbers on their slate boards (actually boards painted black). It was amusing to see the little black faces smudged with white chalk!
Behind the classroom is a bed where a sick child is able to sleep. A room at one end will become an office eventually and the other end is used for storage and a nearly empty first aid kit that we will attempt to replenish before we depart.
Children enthusiastically filed outside, each carrying a blown up balloon, singing and dancing along the way. A few of the children are as young as two. The idea with the school is to give the children a good start, getting them used to going to school and learning. They sang a version of head and shoulders, identifying each part of the head and face in French. The soccer ball was almost the size of the little girl who played hide and seek from behind the ball. The children lined up on the steps of the school and learned very effectively to chant ‘C-A-N-A-D-A’! That alone was enough to make our day!
When time a resources permit, there will be new feature uploaded to U Tube: Second Soccer Ball, Second School.
It was extremely satisfying for us to see the teachers working with those little preschoolers so effectively
On the way back to Bamenda from Bana on Saturday morning it was our further good fortune to experience another fine illustration of ‘le couer généreu’ in Cameroon. ‘Matou conducted a second mini tour for us around the campus of a university donated by a rich man to train students in technical fields. Here you see the sign for the campus, student housing and other buildings and signage marking the entrance to the Fotse Victor University Institute of Technology 3
Here you see campus buildings, a generator and part of a sports field. The government is involved with the running of the university now. In sponsoring this Technical University in his home village and then turning it over to the government to operate, the man made it a condition of his agreement with the government that student tuition fees will not exceed CF50,000 per year ($125 Can). His purpose is to make a University education available to deserving students in his home community regardless of their ability to afford it. Today he continues to give scholarships, build churches in the community anonymously and much more.
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