 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
Please call us on
01724 860151
or
School Visits
School visit to Burkina Faso – October 2011
For the past seven years our school has helped to support the Sagadou School in Burkina Faso. The school was found for us by International Service, a York based charity that does much work in Mali and Burkina in West Africa. We needed to be under the umbrella of an organisation with local knowledge to ensure that money raised by our pupils went direct to the school, with none of it siphoned off due to corruption.
When a representative of our school was invited to visit the Sagadou School last spring we asked around for a teacher and a pupil to represent Frederick Gough. The teacher turned out to be me and the pupil, Daniella Harland then in Year 9. It was decided that the best time to visit would be October half term 2011, after the rainy season and that it would be a private visit by us both during our own time but as representatives of FGS.
The capital city of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou – a name, quite frankly, that I can't say often enough. How exotic is that? I couldn't wait.
Daniella raised every penny for her trip by her and her friends. She and eleven friends cleaned cars in the Kirton Lindsey garden centre car park, sold cakes from a table on Ashby High Street, did a sponsored bike ride up and down Humberside Airport runway and walked for hours during the 24 hour walk/run we hold every July. She was amazingly dedicated and the support from her friends was astounding. They worked tirelessly all through the summer holidays, not only raising her airfare but also extra cash for the Sagadou School who needed solar panels so that electricity could be created for evening lighting. Out there in the poorest region of the fifth poorest country on earth the children are needed to tend to the animals. The older the child gets the more useful they are so therefore, if the school could be lit at night, the older pupils could still attend school once the goats and oxen had been bedded down for the night. Daniella, since the age of seven, had wanted to visit children in Africa. She recognised this as a life changing moment and grasped it with both hands.
Our eventual arrival at the school was unforgettable. Our air-conditioned truck – the temperature was close to 40 degrees with high humidity – left the main mud road onto a track. When the track ran out we were on a narrow path that had not seen wheels in months – the millet slapped at the car windows as we moved forward.
The end of the track opened out into the school yard with the well at one side, a large tree under which assembled what appeared to be the whole village, and ahead of us was the school building which I recognised from photographs we had received over the years. This is a block of three classrooms in a terrace with a deep veranda across the front. There are doors and windows with shutters – no glass. Every thing is dun coloured with the bricks being made locally and dried in the sun to harden.
As we arrived the children and some of the men ran towards the truck beating drums in welcome. WOW. We were then directed towards the seated crowd where we were given the best seats and the most important central place. We had travelled from Ouagadougou with a French/English interpreter (Burkina is an ex French territory) and the Head Teacher, Doussa Ibrahim, had met us 45 kilometres from the school so that he could drive in with us. As the speeches began it became obvious that the villagers spoke two languages, neither of them French or English!
The mayor of the village spoke in one language to another gentleman who spoke in a different language to Doussa who spoke in French to the interpreter who spoke to me. When I replied it all rippled back again. We were welcomed formally by the Mayor, the oldest man in the village, the Head Teacher and a pupil. It all took a very long time.
When the welcome was over I asked the interpreter where the women were. There were none in sight. Apparently they were either cooking or working in the fields. The women work very hard in Burkina Faso and the men are in charge and make the decisions. The village also practiced polygamy so, for instance, the mayor lived in a family compound consisting of 9 or 10 mud huts with thatched roofs built in a circle with a central kitchen area where his three wives took turns in doing the cooking for the whole family. We were shown into one of the huts, and it was very clean, with clothes hung of the roof to keep them off the ground, no furniture but groups of possessions placed around the walls. The people rarely saw money – they grow food and make clothes from textiles they make from the cotton they cultivate.
Lunch was very good, huge bowls of rice flavoured with tomato served from very large pots and chicken. I was aware that this was a special meal and, whilst they had rice, maize or millet every day the chicken was a treat. The size of the meal was simply because they only eat once a day. There were no fat people, anywhere but everyone looked healthy and the children were full of energy. In fact, after our meal Daniella, a PE student, pumped up one of the four footballs she had taken out and under the direction of Doussa two teams were created of about twenty per side, bricks were moved to represent the goals, and the whistles provided by FGS utilised fully. They ran about for the best part of 30 minutes in 40 degrees of heat, loving it, screaming like banshees, laughing when someone missed the ball and cheering loudly when a goal was scored. The referee called a halt to the game because he was tired out; I think the pupils could have gone on for ever although Daniella, whose team won, (YAY England) was a little hot.
And so we left the village for our hotel in the nearest town, Koupela, 45 kilometres away. We were due to return the next day to see how lessons were taught in a classroom containing two classes, two blackboards and one teacher and also to visit the regional education offices where the education area manager who had 35 schools under his auspices wanted to meet us.
When we returned the villagers and teachers were much more relaxed and they were all in work mode. We were taken into a classroom where a lesson was about to start and took seats at the back of the room. There was one teacher and the pupils were in two groups, at desks set out in rows longitudinally down the sides of the room. There were 25 pupils in one group and 28 in the other. The teacher used two blackboards so that the pupils on the left looked at the board at the front and the pupils on the right looked at the board at the back. The teacher set one group off and whilst they were concentrating on their tasks she worked with the other group. The lesson was maths but being taught in French which is not the language the children speak at home. Thanks to FGS all lessons are now taught in French, the international language of Burkina so that pupils have more of a chance of moving out of poverty by eventually being able to get jobs away from home. However, what struck me was that it was exactly the same as our pupils being taught maths in a foreign language – it really is a big ask and yet the children were engaged and able to answer questions after being prompted by who I think was an inspirational teacher and a wonderful role model for the girls.
There are six classes at Sagadou now but only three classrooms so the two women teachers and the Head both cope with double classes on a daily basis. The pupils are all fed at lunchtime too, thanks to our pupils and we have built a kitchen to assist with this. The meals are rice, beans or millet flavoured with vegetables. Meat is a luxury. The bowlfuls are large because this is their one meal of the day but nobody looked hungry or even unhappy; in fact we were drowned in smiles and giggles.
This was the experience of a lifetime, it really was. The heat, the humidity the standard of education within such a poor society are all things I will never, ever forget. I hope to return next year but we have already been asked to bring our own food if we make the trip because the rains have failed and there is likely to be a shortage of food in the village by October 2012 and we saw much evidence of dry river beds as we drove past on the highway. Until you actually meet people the relevance of what you are looking at doesn't strike home. Now it does. Now I understand that this is a society desperately trying to get out of grinding poverty through education. Long may Frederick Gough School do whatever they can to assist with this.
Pat Warrington
Xscape
In April 2011 fifty students visited Xscape Activity Centre at Glasshoughton, near Castleford. Students had to have above 95% attendance and less than 15 sanctions to be invited. Tremendous fun was had by all on the fresh snow slopes.
PGL Activity Centre visit
Every year Miss Daniels runs a trip to the PGL Activity Centre in Caythorpe Court near Grantham for 100 students. Two days and two nights of climbing, swinging, jumping, swimming and high-adrenaline fun. It's not for the faint-hearted!
For the past seven years our school has helped to support the Sagadou School in Burkina Faso. The school was found for us by International Service, a York based charity that does much work in Mali and Burkina in West Africa. We needed to be under the umbrella of an organisation with local knowledge to ensure that money raised by our pupils went direct to the school, with none of it siphoned off due to corruption.
When a representative of our school was invited to visit the Sagadou School last spring we asked around for a teacher and a pupil to represent Frederick Gough. The teacher turned out to be me and the pupil, Daniella Harland then in Year 9. It was decided that the best time to visit would be October half term 2011, after the rainy season and that it would be a private visit by us both during our own time but as representatives of FGS.
|
Daniella raised every penny for her trip by her and her friends. She and eleven friends cleaned cars in the Kirton Lindsey garden centre car park, sold cakes from a table on Ashby High Street, did a sponsored bike ride up and down Humberside Airport runway and walked for hours during the 24 hour walk/run we hold every July. She was amazingly dedicated and the support from her friends was astounding. They worked tirelessly all through the summer holidays, not only raising her airfare but also extra cash for the Sagadou School who needed solar panels so that electricity could be created for evening lighting. Out there in the poorest region of the fifth poorest country on earth the children are needed to tend to the animals. The older the child gets the more useful they are so therefore, if the school could be lit at night, the older pupils could still attend school once the goats and oxen had been bedded down for the night. Daniella, since the age of seven, had wanted to visit children in Africa. She recognised this as a life changing moment and grasped it with both hands.
Our eventual arrival at the school was unforgettable. Our air-conditioned truck – the temperature was close to 40 degrees with high humidity – left the main mud road onto a track. When the track ran out we were on a narrow path that had not seen wheels in months – the millet slapped at the car windows as we moved forward.
The end of the track opened out into the school yard with the well at one side, a large tree under which assembled what appeared to be the whole village, and ahead of us was the school building which I recognised from photographs we had received over the years. This is a block of three classrooms in a terrace with a deep veranda across the front. There are doors and windows with shutters – no glass. Every thing is dun coloured with the bricks being made locally and dried in the sun to harden.
|
The mayor of the village spoke in one language to another gentleman who spoke in a different language to Doussa who spoke in French to the interpreter who spoke to me. When I replied it all rippled back again. We were welcomed formally by the Mayor, the oldest man in the village, the Head Teacher and a pupil. It all took a very long time.
When the welcome was over I asked the interpreter where the women were. There were none in sight. Apparently they were either cooking or working in the fields. The women work very hard in Burkina Faso and the men are in charge and make the decisions. The village also practiced polygamy so, for instance, the mayor lived in a family compound consisting of 9 or 10 mud huts with thatched roofs built in a circle with a central kitchen area where his three wives took turns in doing the cooking for the whole family. We were shown into one of the huts, and it was very clean, with clothes hung of the roof to keep them off the ground, no furniture but groups of possessions placed around the walls. The people rarely saw money – they grow food and make clothes from textiles they make from the cotton they cultivate.
Lunch was very good, huge bowls of rice flavoured with tomato served from very large pots and chicken. I was aware that this was a special meal and, whilst they had rice, maize or millet every day the chicken was a treat. The size of the meal was simply because they only eat once a day. There were no fat people, anywhere but everyone looked healthy and the children were full of energy. In fact, after our meal Daniella, a PE student, pumped up one of the four footballs she had taken out and under the direction of Doussa two teams were created of about twenty per side, bricks were moved to represent the goals, and the whistles provided by FGS utilised fully. They ran about for the best part of 30 minutes in 40 degrees of heat, loving it, screaming like banshees, laughing when someone missed the ball and cheering loudly when a goal was scored. The referee called a halt to the game because he was tired out; I think the pupils could have gone on for ever although Daniella, whose team won, (YAY England) was a little hot.
And so we left the village for our hotel in the nearest town, Koupela, 45 kilometres away. We were due to return the next day to see how lessons were taught in a classroom containing two classes, two blackboards and one teacher and also to visit the regional education offices where the education area manager who had 35 schools under his auspices wanted to meet us.
When we returned the villagers and teachers were much more relaxed and they were all in work mode. We were taken into a classroom where a lesson was about to start and took seats at the back of the room. There was one teacher and the pupils were in two groups, at desks set out in rows longitudinally down the sides of the room. There were 25 pupils in one group and 28 in the other. The teacher used two blackboards so that the pupils on the left looked at the board at the front and the pupils on the right looked at the board at the back. The teacher set one group off and whilst they were concentrating on their tasks she worked with the other group. The lesson was maths but being taught in French which is not the language the children speak at home. Thanks to FGS all lessons are now taught in French, the international language of Burkina so that pupils have more of a chance of moving out of poverty by eventually being able to get jobs away from home. However, what struck me was that it was exactly the same as our pupils being taught maths in a foreign language – it really is a big ask and yet the children were engaged and able to answer questions after being prompted by who I think was an inspirational teacher and a wonderful role model for the girls.
There are six classes at Sagadou now but only three classrooms so the two women teachers and the Head both cope with double classes on a daily basis. The pupils are all fed at lunchtime too, thanks to our pupils and we have built a kitchen to assist with this. The meals are rice, beans or millet flavoured with vegetables. Meat is a luxury. The bowlfuls are large because this is their one meal of the day but nobody looked hungry or even unhappy; in fact we were drowned in smiles and giggles.
This was the experience of a lifetime, it really was. The heat, the humidity the standard of education within such a poor society are all things I will never, ever forget. I hope to return next year but we have already been asked to bring our own food if we make the trip because the rains have failed and there is likely to be a shortage of food in the village by October 2012 and we saw much evidence of dry river beds as we drove past on the highway. Until you actually meet people the relevance of what you are looking at doesn't strike home. Now it does. Now I understand that this is a society desperately trying to get out of grinding poverty through education. Long may Frederick Gough School do whatever they can to assist with this.
Pat Warrington
Xscape
In April 2011 fifty students visited Xscape Activity Centre at Glasshoughton, near Castleford. Students had to have above 95% attendance and less than 15 sanctions to be invited. Tremendous fun was had by all on the fresh snow slopes.
|
PGL Activity Centre visit
Every year Miss Daniels runs a trip to the PGL Activity Centre in Caythorpe Court near Grantham for 100 students. Two days and two nights of climbing, swinging, jumping, swimming and high-adrenaline fun. It's not for the faint-hearted!
|
