Teaching in Sembehun has convinced me that education is not dependent on physical resources. In the absence of computers and smart boards learning will stem from a single piece of chalk as it moves across a piece of cellotex blackened with battery acid. When there are no textbooks, students will learn Shakespeare by memorizing hand copied lines from The Merchant of Venice. Standing under the shade of a mango tree, they will open Portia’s boxes, not minding that they were constructed from sheets of paper torn from a notebook.
Having little teaches you to value what you have. A year ago, Kankaylay Junior Secondary School was nothing more than a cement building with broken desks and pane-less windows. It still has broken windows and desks, but now it holds memories as well. Kankaylay is a place where I have gone to teach every day. I have seen the school prefects dragging broken benches outside to use a stone to pound in the loose nails. I have watched girls carrying buckets of water on their head while the boys dug into the ground to churn up the earth. They scooped up the mud with their hands to pack it on the walls of the primary school. If having a place to learn requires building it with your bare hands, that is exactly what students will do.
In early September before school re-opened, I spent my days interviewing the new form I students. One morning while I was at the school, Zakaria Swaray came to greet me. He surveyed the school compound which had grown into a small jungle during the rainy months of July and August when school was closed.
“We skul de opin bete lanin no go de,”he said. (When school opens, we won’t be learning much).
“Why?”I asked.
“Look how the place is dirty. We will have to pull all this grass.”
“Or we could pull it now,” I suggested, not expecting him to take me seriously.
Zakaria stood frowning at the weeds for a moment, then he bent down and began uprooting them.
“I’m only doing this because I want to learn,” he said somewhat defensively lest I think he enjoyed weeding.
I got up and joined him, breathing in the fresh scent of damp sun-warmed earth. That’s why I’m doing this too, I thought, because I want you to learn.
