May 21, 2010

The following are excerpts from the preface of the first winning title of the Burt Award for African Literature, Treeland: the Land of Laughter by Mkama Mwijarubi. The preface was written by Professor Mulokozi, Institute of Kiswahili Studies, University of Dar es Salaam and it provides a strong rationale for the Burt Award to support English literature for youth written and published in Tanzania.

Tanzanian writing in English is neither extensive nor well-known. In the 1960s and 1970s, a number of budding writers, such as Gabriel Ruhumbika (Village in Uhuru, 1969), Peter Pallangyo (Dying in the Sun, 1969), Ismael Mbise (Blood on Our Land, 1974), Hamza Sokko (The Gathering Storm, 1977), and William Mkufya (The Wicked Walk, 1977), did produce some promising works in English. But most of these authors later opted to write in Kiswahili instead of English, probably because Kiswahili literature appeared to have better prospects in the Tanzanian context at the time. Since the 1980s more writers in English have come on the scene. They include Tanzanian writers in the Diaspora, such as M.G. Vassanji and Abdulrazak Gurnah, who have since become world famous. There are several other interesting Tanzanian authors writing in English today; the most notable are S.N. Ngunguru (several novels) and Eliesha Lema (Parched Earth, 2001); the latter writes also in Kiswahili.

One factor unites these pioneering authors – they all write for an adult or general audience. They do not write for young people. There is, thus, a serious earth of juvenile literature, written and published in Tanzania, and intended for the youth.

In addition to motivating local authorship, the [Burt Award for African Literature] competition aims at enhancing English language reading skills among Tanzanian secondary school students through provision of contextually suitable, interesting and well-written English readers for students, school libraries and youth at large. The organizers recognized the fundamental language problem facing Tanzanian secondary schools; the fact that students in public schools have to make an abrupt transition from Kiswahili-medium to English medium education without the requisite English language mastery. It was recognized that this problem cannot be simply addressed through teaching the language, for mastery of a foreign language which is not widely spoken outside the classroom calls for more creative pedagogical techniques, including intensive and extensive reading; this in turn demands access to many and varied books and other reading materials commensurate with the learner’s language level.

Wide reading not only improves the students’ language skills, it also broadens their horizon, and equips them with the linguistic and analytical tools for accessing knowledge in other subjects. The end product is a cultured, confident, knowledgeable and informed school leaver with the potential to contribute meaningfully to the development of a knowledge society as a lifelong reader, potential writer, and informed critic.

April 28, 2010

On Friday I head north to Cabo Delgado, the northern coastal province of Mozambique. My few days of acclimatizing to the sounds of Portuguese in Maputo will be tested when discussions have to be translated three-ways into the local language.

After a night in Pemba, the provincial capital, I’ll travel overland 500 km north to Mueda with a couple teachers from Portugal where they are developing learning and teacher training materials for teaching children to speak Portuguese.  Their work is helping teachers prepare children to learn in Portuguese, a language many do not hear outside the classroom, or even before they set foot inside a school.

It sounds like teachers are clamoring for their support; extra teachers want to be included in the weekend workshops. The materials include detailed lesson plans for 90 minute classes to teach Grade one children to speak Portuguese, and there are lesson plans to cover three classes a week for three trimesters. The lesson plans give teachers a guide to use songs, games and other activities to fill the 90 minutes with fun and engaging activities that encourage children to learn a language that is foreign to them. Teachers get to practice delivering the lessons to their peers before getting support to deliver them in the classroom. It’s curious that the work is considered innovative, when 95% of children in Mozambique go to school to learn in a language that is not their mother tongue. Teachers are not trained to teach Portuguese, only to teach IN Portuguese.

I must remember to ask why Meuda was chosen as the site for this pilot project. I’ve been reminded to pack candles, because there is no electricity, and a chlorine product for purifying the water because even the water brought for bathing needs to be treated. Our partner Progresso established a teacher Resource Centre in Mueda with a generator, so I may be able to charge my laptop.

The Portuguese teachers told me about one of the schools they are working in. The local teachers had trouble getting parents to send their children because the school was just a clearing in the bush. To solve this, the teachers built shade structures out of branches and straw to provide classrooms and now the children are coming.

This school highlights the challenge of preparing materials because teaching a second language is a visual activity. One of the early lesson plans teaches vocabulary about the school environment, introducing words for desks, chairs, windows, books, walls, floor, etc. But in this school there are none of those things, so the materials have to include images to introduce the words.

I wonder if perhaps the lesson should be adapted to the visuals that ARE present in and around the school instead: thatch, poles, banana trees, blackboard, earth, leopards…

Yes, school is different there. Recently one of the children was attacked by a leopard on the way to school – though we must remember, this is not a hazard of going to school. It is just a hazard of life.

March 26, 2010
Sierra Leone is a unique country with many experiences and challenges that most could not imagine. The week has witnessed a great deal of learning; mainly by me. I spent so much time listening to professionals tell me about their work, the state of education in the country, challenges and opportunities to move the country ahead. I listened mostly, sharing opinions or experiences seemed hard for the first few days. After all, I had to answer the question bi hi milo? all week. Which in Krio means “Where are you from?” To offer too much while still saying Canada seemed out of line.

All week I learned about the shortage of teachers, the percent that are UU (untrained and unqualified), the use of bribes to pass, the inability of children to read the questions on the primary school leaving examination and at the same time, all the efforts being taken by government and civil society to try and assist. By Thursday night, I was feeling that the situation was hopeless without the world rallying together and putting together a Marshal Plan for Sierra Leone.

Friday changed my feelings. We held a meeting of experts and professionals from the education and book sector to discuss our approach to teaching reading and writing to Sierra Leone children. The meeting was scheduled to start at 9:00, we started by 9:30 when we had good attendance. Transportation in the city is costly and it takes a lot of time to move through the traffic. Note to self.

I had finalized plans the night before – at about 11:00 pm. We had a hall booked, paid for fuel to run the generator, tea and coffee arranged, supplies purchased, a PowerPoint projector rented, transport secured and an agenda approved. What could go wrong with everything in order?

The PowerPoint projector bulb was so weak you could not see the presentations. This resulted in me speaking from the top of my mind, which wasn’t too hard, just not as structured as I had planned. The visuals of high quality teaching and learning materials including new books coming from our program in Liberia were supposed to win over the crowd. I resorted to walking among the crowd with laptop in hand to make sure everyone could see examples of the resources I was talking about. In the end all worked out with many questions and recommendations.

Following my presentation, we had a wonderful reading performed by Dr. Aisha Fofana Ibrahim, from Fourah Bay College, of Mohammed Sheriff’s book Maryama Must Go! A lovely book of courage and love written for children. She captured the tone of the story and the characters throughout, winning over the audience. It was a great illustration of how a teacher can use good books to excite children.

Dr. David Klooster took over the session after a short break. As a teacher trainer he was able to make the group relax and participate actively. Everyone was engaged, laughing and sharing. At one point in his demonstration of child-centred learning strategies, he used a poem written by one of the authors in CODE’s Reading Liberia program, Ms. Watchen Johnson Babalola. The poem:

Plantain, fish and eddoe leaves

Fry ‘am, roast ‘am, boil ‘am;

Now roll up your pretty sleeves

Make red oil no spoil ;am

had the crowd so pleased. This was a lovely poem that related to their language and culture (Liberia and Sierra Leone are neighbours). The smiles and body language spoke a million words. The man to my left kept smiling and repeating “Make red oil no spoil ‘am.”

This moment in the meeting told me that we can make Reading Sierra Leone work for teachers and children in the country. No doubt it will be a challenge, but we have never let that stand in our way before.

I can’t wait to see what surprises next week has in store for me.

March 26, 2010
I’m afraid my contributions to this Sierra Leone blog are all introductions and conclusions and nothing in between. I’m on my way back to North America after a week in Freetown, a whirlwind week, so here are a few reflections on what I saw and heard and learned.

I guess I’m most impressed, after this crash course in the education situation in Sierra Leone, with the enormity of the task ahead of us. In many of our meetings and in the day-long IRC conference on Thursday with a dozen or so speakers, we heard again and again descriptions of an education system in crisis. Most everyone agrees that despite the great strides taken since 2001 in re-opening schools and getting kids back in the classroom, the real learning of the children of this country isn’t getting much better, and it may very well be getting worse and worse.

The qualifications of the teachers is a major issue—many are untrained and unqualified. They are known as the “U-U’s” and most of these teachers (and there are thousands of them—perhaps a majority of the teachers in the rural schools) work as “volunteers” in the schools. Headmasters slip them a stipend out of their budget, but few receive more than $10 a month—about 60 cents a day for working with classes of 30-100 students. It’s no surprise that both student and teacher absenteeism is a major problem in these conditions. Instructional time is extremely limited—just a couple of hours a day, not more than 10 hours a week—since the schools run two shifts each day, morning and afternoon, in an effort to serve the huge number of children who want to go to school.

Although “free, basic education” is a guaranteed right for Sierra Leonean children, most of the people we spoke with agreed that it isn’t happening for far too many students. “Basic education” is defined as 6 years of primary school and 3 years of middle school, called “Junior Secondary School” or JSS in Sierra Leone. The government, the UN, and most of the international partners have focused on the six years of primary school, but few have started to work on JSS. And since more kids are now in primary school (and there are just more kids overall as the population grows rapidly), there’s huge pressure to create more opportunity in JSS.

There are around 5000 primary schools in the country, but only 500 JSSs. In many rural areas, the “local” JSS is miles away, too far for a twelve-year-old to travel every day. So only a very small fraction of the Sierra Leonean adolescents go to school. Most drop out to work or marry or hang out. One conference participant said, “If we don’t give young people a chance to go to school, we are creating a time bomb.”

Of the 37,000 Sierra Leonean JSS students who sat for the West African School exam, only about 500 passed.

(presenting CODE at the workshop)

Facilities, access, teacher qualification, the pathetic salaries, lack of textbooks and other learning materials, the paucity of resources provided by the government—we heard these issues repeated throughout the week. In many ways we weren’t surprised, but it was bracing to hear the extent of the problems. One presentation at the IRC conference brought the enormity of the issue home for me.

A District Council official from a rural area, spent 15 minutes reading the list of furniture, equipment, and supplies his organization provided to schools in recent years, and the list went into great detail. “We brought 100 chairs and 20 tables to a school in Kono District, and we brought a dining table and six chairs to the teacher’s room, and provided a chalkboard, and gave a motor bike to the school inspector so he could visit the far-flung schools.” His shopping list stretched on and on. It made me realize exactly what is involved when our conversation partners talked about “rebuilding the schools of Sierra Leone.” Rebuilding is anything but a metaphor.

A note for a future dissertation writer: it will be fascinating to compare in a few years the results of the Liberian Teacher Training Program (LTTP)—a massive, expensive US-AID supported effort to bring untrained volunteer teachers up to a basic level of competence—and the modest home-grown Sierra Leonean project to offer distance-learning courses for this same problem. A basic question: are the literacy skills of these teachers up to the challenges of correspondence courses?

Our week ended on a positive note. We meet on Friday morning with 25 educators, NGO personnel from various agencies, writers, journalists, and illustrators in a hot and dusty room to introduce Reading Sierra Leone in a formal presentation. With everyone in the same room, we could explain the program, demonstrate how the workshops work, and talk honestly together about the challenges RSL will face. Sean explained the Four Pillars of RSL, and I taught the first lesson in the workshop leaders’ guide, co-authored by Wendy Saul and Alison Preece. My sense was that participants liked what they saw and heard, and many of them look like good people to keep working with in the years ahead. As we ate our post-workshop lunch of jollof rice, I thought, “There where a lot of smart people in the room today.”

(Aisha Fofana Ibrahim reading a children’s book at the introductory workshop)

The challenges are daunting. But the children and teachers of Sierra Leone face much greater challenges than we do, and I’m eager to get to work on the cause of literacy in what some of the locals call “Sweet Salone”—the special country of Sierra Leone.

(Sean considers a local program partner)

March 23, 2010

(carrying home the firewood)

I’m here in Freetown with Sean Maddox, at the end of our second day of trying to build a foundation for Reading Sierra Leone. It’s my first time out with CODE, though Sean and I have been trading many stories since we met in London at the boarding gate, about our years in similar work in many places. We share Liberia as a place we’ve worked before and grown fond of, though on different projects, and then he matches one of my Eastern European stories with one of his from Africa, and on it goes through the day.
Part of what is fascinating about coming to a new place in our travels is learning to let go of the lenses we’ve brought along with us and coming to see the place on its own terms. Most of our work so far has been a round of meetings to learn from the local people and about the places that might play into our work in the years to come. These meetings are about listening carefully, trying to watch for the enthusiasms or the hesitations that need to be followed up on, and hoping to find the partners who will become colleagues, and, we hope, friends in the months to come.
One of the first overwhelming impressions of the city is of the huge street commerce everywhere. Everyone on the streets seems very young—crowds of kids and teens and 20 somethings. Rarely a face over 40. And everyone is selling something. Kiosks and tables are full of goods for sale, and everyone has a small segment of the market. A table of cosmetics, next to a pail of bright red pigs feet, next to the building supplies store, next to a table of books, next to a stack of vegetables. Everyone is hoping for a sale, but there seem to be dozens of sellers for every buyer we see.
And the economic issues are mentioned in most of our meetings—the struggle to motivate teachers who barely get paid for their work with classrooms ranging from 50 to over 100 students. The lack of books and supplies. The problems the families face. Money and its absence are a continual theme of the day.
And, as so often happens on trips like this one, the conversations one overhears on the hotels for foreigners are jarring. Tonight as I waited for Sean, I overheard an American at the next table talking to a couple of local entrepreneurs about why his brand of whisky was the one they wanted to import, and would they like one shipping container full or two?

March 23, 2010
The power just went out again and I lost my first attempt to reflect on my arrival in Sierra Leone. Oddly enough the computer didn’t recover the draft from the power surge. But perhaps oddity and misconceptions should be my focus with this entry.

Upon arrival Sunday evening I was prepared to confront one of my greatest fears again, flying in a helicopter. My previous experiences had been in small bell types. This was a large Soviet design that rolled down the runway so smoothly I didn’t even know when we had left the ground. Much better than the bell that takes a nose dive on lift off.
Having worked with Liberia for the last two years, I had expected to find the same devastation and destruction from the war- lost youth, a heavy UN presence, and limited food in the markets. Quite contrary to Liberia, here in Freetown I have seen no signs of the war besides billboards advocating for peace, security and reconstruction. The youth and young adults are not standing around waiting for an opportunity, they are pursuing business at my expense. The UN has down-sized and the war crimes courts are shutting down. And the market, or at least one of them that my traveling companion, Dr. David Klooster and I entered today, was full of wonderful fruits, vegetables and meat: no one needs to go hungry in Freetown for lack of food.
Getting around and becoming familiar with Freetown will take some time. The town is along the ocean but divided in sections with rather large hills. If the hills were near Ottawa we would certainly see ski hills operating. The hills make it a challenge to get a good feel for where you are and how you will get to where you want to go. Further, every taxi driver has his own short cut- making it difficult to start registering land marks.
We have spent the last 48 hours tracking people down. Negotiating deals. Being overwhelmed with professionals’ passion for working to bring Reading Sierra Leone to their country. We have so much to build on based on the commitment of so many here to change the educational experience of children and to create a love for reading among the children and youth.
I look forward to learning from organizations like PEN Sierra Leone, children’s’ author Mohamed Sheriff, education and gender specialist Aisha Fofana Ibrahim and others. Working together and with the support of many other committed professionals I know this program will give great joy to all involved if we are able to get it off the ground.
Must run, another meeting with yet another leader of change in Sierra Leone.

Feb 6, 2010
I spent the morning “liming” (that’s ‘Guyanese’ for hanging out) but spent the afternoon in the next region to the west across the massive Demerara River.  The General Manager of the Guyana Book Foundation (GBF), Leila Jagdeo, graciously gave up her Sunday afternoon to take me out of Georgetown and into its rural surroundings.

Once again, reminders of the English, Dutch and even French heritage were everywhere – from the architecture of houses and churches to the physical features of dykes. The quaint and colourful  town names, such as D’oratoire, L’Heureuse Aventure, and Bon Voisin also pay hommage to the country’s past.

The idea was to see more of the country but for me it was a useful acquaintance with the context in which GBF operates.  How else can I work together with them without knowing the lay of the land?
Crops of rice and sugar cane abounded as did controlled irrigation canals cut far into the land from the massive Demerara that pours out from the interior for hundreds of kilometres.  We made it as far as the Berbice River, another powerful force flowing toward the ocean – and wandering around the market I realized that there seems to be nothing that does not grow in Guyana (Mrs. Jagdeo would tell you there is no tea … but I think that is only because no one chooses to grow it!).  There are sapodillas, star fruit, star apples, watermelon, pumpkin, papaya, mangos of several types, pineapple (on a stick even), tangerines, avocado, bananas of several types, plantain and more. There  is an abundance of readily available and very fresh local vegetables  including  bunches of callaloo and shallots, piles of eggplant, edo, chilli peppers, ginger, tomatoes, avocadoes, cashews and walnuts .  Don’t ask me where the rice and sugar cane were …

I should mention here the many beautiful crafts and products that are also available in Guyana.  The nine Amerindian tribes produce the blow dart chambers, hair ornaments, combs from different combinations of bone, wood, pine needs, and feathers; massive cassava squeezers (matapi) that help to create edible cassava; pottery, carved melon shells, seed necklaces, tree sap ‘leather’, bowls and jewellery of purple heart wood;  straw products such as baskets, earrings, ducks, boxes of all shapes, coasters and more.  There are also beautiful leather products including sandals and bags.  There is wonderful gold jewellery and paintings of many Guyanese scenes,  The agricultural products are also worth noting – in no particular order - rum, coffee, cocoa, sugar, cashews to name a few.

The day ended with a drive by the teacher training college and the University of Guyana.  Both are still functioning but they face the same challenges as other Guyanese institutions – insufficient human resources, students with lower levels of literacy and the need for more materials and operating funds.   We stopped by a pond on campus with the other-worldly national lily pad and flower covering it (who knew the lily pads are covered in thorns on the back?) and to our surprise we were told to beware the caimans within!

Who knew that sitting at my dining room table 28 years ago, writing about a girl who likes red best, would lead to this?!
It probably sounds like a holiday, especially to people back home experiencing some of the coldest days of winter so far this year. But I’m working hard here in Liberia, sharing some of what I’ve learned about writing and editing over the years with people keen to write, even though it may not sound much like work. And it is, after all, a pretty fine kind of hard work to be given the chance to do.
This year I’m working with writers who have stories nearing publication and writers who hope the stories they’re working on might be chosen for the next publishing season. Some I worked with last year and they quickly became like friends. There are new faces and new voices in the group, too, and we spent part of our first hour together getting introduced and making sure I could pronounce their names correctly: Ovie, Cherue, Akoi.
More later, but for now I have more stories to read, more work to prepare for tomorrow…

Tuesday Feb 1-4, 2010

I arrived bleary eyed – having enjoyed my flight over the rain forest and massive rivers of the Guyanese hinterland -  in my crumpled black pants, shirt and sweater to a wall of heat and humidity, splashes of flowers and wonderful fragrances — and sunshine!  So many of the houses and buildings here are made of wood and raised on stilts, many of the official ones dating from Dutch or British colonial times.

In the afternoon, I headed to the Guyana Book Foundation to meet staff and see the well-established office.  I was greeted by the five staff and given a tour.  The office is part bookstore - where GBF displays the books it publishes, procures and purchases.  Teachers and  tertiary students were in and out looking around and making purchases for their schools or themselves (only one book per student – with ID – as the prices are largely subsidized and the privilege is intended to be shared around).

GBF has a varied program, one that is largely based on book distribution, but also involves the training of teachers and librarians.  I learned about the daunting task of receiving, storing, tracking and distributing thousands of books each year.

The following day I met nursery workshop facilitators, both highly experienced and trained early childhood specialists, who the General Manager of GBF Leila Jagdeo, and I accompanied on a tour of 7 nursery school in the 40 degree heat and humidity.  As I got dizzier I realized that I was not keeping up with the liquid intake required but it was nothing a few cold tropical juices couldn’t remedy.

The nursery schools were impressive – their physical structures – but more so the organization and dedication displayed within – literally.  The rooms were full of original, creative and colourful teacher-made learning aids and manipulables of all kinds.  There were plants everywhere and children’s work displayed, songs being sung and stories being told and praise and encouragement doled out.  The children are experiencing so many learning opportunities that are just not available in their homes.  School is also the only place for most to hear and experience standard English

The 4-6 year olds there were as darling and sweet as all children that age are – and so obviously happy and enjoying their days.

Mrs Sukhdeo and Mrs Trott were visiting the schools in advance of a workshop they will run in a day or two – in order to assess student ability, the learning environment and the learning materials and methods – to tailor the workshop as much as possible to the teacher participants who will attend from those schools.  All results were shared and discussed at the end of each visit.  We dropped into these schools in relatively well-off villages, in very poor ones, in formerly extremely violent ones and in some where the majority of families are involved in labour, cutting sugar cane, for example.  The cross-section was an eye-opener for me.

As I walked along the sea wall later that day, the wind blasting me, I took a bite of the mango I had bought and my eyes automatically closed as I took in the intense flavour – and I reflected on what personal benefits program monitoring visits can also bring!

I will explain a couple of challenges and start a discussion about the solution. I guess I have already come up with a solution for the first challenge.

Challenge 1:
We went art-supply shopping after the workshop today. Real art supplies are practically nonexistent in Monrovia. There are art kits for the hobbyist, but the tubes of paint are tiny and the kit contains all this stuff we don’t need.  The artists in the workshop are generally having art supplies brought in from the US by family and friends who are traveling.  This is going to be a major challenge. Because each artist is going to paint roughly 15 pieces, and some of the pieces need to be quite large, we need lots of materials. We need large sizes of water color paper for water colors (Chase), and large canvas pads for most of the others who will work in Acrylics. We ideally need the 19 x 24 inch size. This art needs to be created at “half up” (150%) or “quarter u”p (125%). Our double page spreads are  9  x 16 inches, so half-up would be  13 1/2 x 24 inches.

We have come up with a solution. We have found a good quality poster paper in an office supply store. Chase will use it as-is for his water color work and we will prime this paper with house paint for the acrylic artist. We will get pints or quarts or possibly even gallons of house paint tomorrow in a selection of colors for the acrylic artist. I bought 3 sets of artist acrylics today to supplement the house paint with some more intense colors. They are tiny tubes that won’t go far. We will be resourceful and do what is necessary to make this happen. We are so spoiled in North America. I brought 100 sheets of tracing paper with me, but we will use them up tomorrow. One of the artist knew where we could get more. So it seems we are able to find solutions and move forward.

Challenge 2:
Another challenge we have is the scanning. We will need low quality scans of this artwork for communication with Canada and then there is the problem of the final high-quality scan that will be needed to create the final files for the printer. The artists are creating their final drawings at the large half and quarter up sizes. In order for us to comment on, and approve these drawing we will either need to scan them in many pieces that will be reassembled in Toronto, or we will use digital photographs. The digital photos could have distortion if they are done incorrectly. So we will muddle through with one of these solutions, but we will need to solve the problem of the final scans. I am in favor of shipping the artwork to Toronto, so that we can scan it, unless we can find a good quality large scanner in Monrovia or  possibly at the printers that we will be using.

Challenge 3:
The schedule is another problem. I realize there is some urgency about getting these first four books finished, but this may be a problem. I will have a better idea at the end of the week. I can see that at least one of the artists will be streaking ahead and moving quickly through his book. Each artist is producing 15 significant pieces of art. Some of them may need to paint some of them more than once. I just want to give-a heads up to everyone so that we can discuss the trade off between schedule and quality.
We are now working well together and there is some good energy in the room. All the artists are very enthusiastic and hungry for knowledge. Some of them are quite talented. It is a very rewarding experience. The Exit Cards choke me up.

Here are a couple of my Exit Cards from today:

*   I am greatly getting an impact of which I was lacking: that is the instruction given by Mr. Gord, directs me to a whole lot of hidden secrets in illustration. I praise God for Mr. Gord and wish him well in his endeavor
*   I feel so great about today workshop I pray it will continue like this tomorrow.
*   This work is one of my greatest experience in all my years as an illustrator, I am looking forward to learning how to use the computer (Wacom) the latest use. I’m looking forward to establishing a full partnership.
*   I’m very happy to see myself in this workshop because I am gaining enough of knowledge and experience.
*   As for me I feel very good about the workshop. Its makes me to meet some good people.