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| Group Work during Annual General Assembly |
The new academic year has
started and for us in Knowledge for Children that always means a busy period. We
started the new school year in our usual way; with our Annual General Assembly.
During this day, we bring all head teachers and PTA presidents from all our schools
to Kumbo. We kick off the year together, we inform them about our plans etc.
This year it was a bit special as the event marked the start of our ten year
anniversary.
After our assembly, the real
work can start. Last week we started training all teachers of all our schools.
In one month, we aim to train over 700 primary school teachers. It is not
always an easy job, the roads are very bad as this is still the rainy season.
Many teachers are really behind and it is not easy teaching them to do new
things. But we are trying our best and at least a few of them will really learn
new things!
Last week, we found out that
the highest government official in our area, the Senior Divisional Officer
(SDO) had given a notice that no meetings were allowed on and even around the 1st of
October. We were not aware so it took some efforts to find out what was
happening.
Cameroon is mainly a French
speaking country. Only our North West and the neighbouring South West Region
are Anglophone. There is a group of people who want to separate these two
regions from the rest of Cameroon and want to join Nigeria or want to create
their own state. This group of people declared the 1st of October as
their own ‘Southern Cameroon’ day.
Of course, the government is
not happy about this, and banned all meetings on the 1st of October
and the days before and after. People who would meet would have been seen as
supporters of this separation movement they say.
We found out about this only
the day before. So I ended up calling all government officials around, visiting
them, asking them for permission to hold our training. Of course the hierarchy
is so strong that nobody can do anything without support of someone else.
For us it was quite important
to get permission. We informed all schools ahead and many of the schools are
not so easy to reach by phone as not every village has good network coverage. So
it is difficult to contact them and tell them the training was postponed till
November. Also, we train in October to make sure all teachers can use it during
the entire new academic year. Postponing till November will make it less
effective.
In short, I went through the
entire government hierarchy, pleaded with them, begged for permission and
explained our own challenges. In the end, we got permission and had a successful
workshop. The next few weeks we will finish and train all teachers in all our
schools. By November that will be finished and then we will continue with the
next steps. Stay tuned!
PS After last blog I discovered a new shop which is my favourite now; ‘Fear Women’ (repairing motorbikes)
