A quick update before the New Year

I have been doing a lot of thinking about what we have accomplished in the project this year and all that we hope to do in the year to come, but those thoughts are not yet quite formulated enough for the blog...stay tuned.

The best news at the library this week is that we are finally on the electric grid! This is especially fantastic given that our first donated computers are arriving next week.

The library itself was quiet this week with the kids on break, but we still saw at least 10 students a day coming in to read and draw. We are starting to see kids from more and more schools, including a whole table of boys who came in this week from one of the local Koranic schools. They sing when reading out loud, a skill they learn while memorizing the Koran, which sounds really cool even if it does not improve their reading comprehension.

We tried to take advantage of the quiet week to do some administrative tasks, but ran up against some of the complexities of dealing with various layers of the Malian bureaucracy. We try to deal with the ensuing frustration with patience, and by chalking it up to a learning experience. The next time we need to get something out of customs without paying exorbitant fees we will be ready.

Finally, just to remind you we work with real children and young people who face complex challenges, yesterday we received food at the library because one of our 9th grade students was getting married. We have many students in the 9th grade who are 18 or older, but this girl is not one of them. Education is a tool that can help Malian girls achieve greater equality in their relationships and more control over their lives and those of their future children. We hope that this marriage will not put a halt to our student's education, but the outlook is not good.

Christmas Week Update

This week was the last week before Christmas break and the last of the first trimester, so our 6th - 9th grade students had exams. We saw many students coming into the library for a quiet place to study, and a few even came to tell me they thought they'd done well on their English exam. We also continued to see an increase in kids from other neighborhood schools coming to visit the library and use our resources, including these two girls.

Ana, the one on the right, likes to hold books open in front of her and “read aloud” by either making up her own stories in Bambara or reciting one of her French texts from school. She also likes to ask librarians to read books aloud to her. We hope she'll be coming in a lot more in the new year.

In other news, our new shipment of books has arrived from the US, but is currently tied up in customs. I spent several hours this week between the post office and customs headquarters moving from office to office trying to find the person who could explain how to get the “exoneration” everyone assured us should be “no problem” to get. We believe we have finally figured out the proper procedure and the right person to expedite it, so the books should be in our possession by the end of next week, inchallah.

Finally, as we prepare to celebrate Christmas in Bamako, I want to tell you that I have been amazed by your generosity towards the project. Thanks to you, we have raised over four thousand dollars, which will go a long way for the project in 2012 and beyond. To everyone who donated, thank you for believing in our students' potential and in the work we do. We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas, Happy rest of Chanukah, Happy belated Winter Solstice, or whatever other celebrations you have in mind.

Cours Privés

I realized that in all the excitement over the library, we have almost completely forgotten to mention that our cours privés (private classes) program is also up and running. We have French classes for the 7th-9th grade running here at Maourou Diarra, and, even more exciting, Math and Science for the 9th graders at Saint Pierre, the other middle school in our cluster.

When I first started envisioning this project, I was hesitant about the idea of including these classes because it felt a lot like SAT prep and it seemed like this couldn't possibly be one of the key educational needs of the neighborhood. But, as we've discussed earlier on this blog, the DEF exams our students take after the 9th grade are about as critical as they come. A good score the first time around means a government paid education at a good high school. Multiple failures most likely means an education that ends in 9th grade. Many parents pay for expensive cours privés to better prepare their kids for these tests, but such classes are out of reach for the vast majority of Niamakoro families.

The Niamakoro Education Project's cours privés offer free, quality instruction to interested students to help them catch up on concepts they haven't yet grasped and prepare them for some of the most important sections of the DEF. On Saturday I stopped by Saint Pierre to get these pictures of math class. Our math teacher, Fidel, is an incredibly bright soon-to-be first year medical student. He is great with the students and it is clear they already respect him. We believe that improved DEF scores will be one tangible measure of the NEP's impact.

Don't forget, you have the opportunity to support this mission by donating. Just $75 pays for an entire month of these classes. Visit http://www.niamakoro-education.org/donate for more information!

The Gift of Books

'Tis the season for holiday giving. We could just try the cute child strategy and show you this picture of Tonton, our youngest kindergartener. How could you resist buying him more markers?

But really, the reasons to donate to support our work go beyond Tonton tugging at your heartstrings. If you've been reading this blog, you already know the situation our students face. To remind you, we work in the country with the worst recorded literacy rate in the world (fewer than 1 in 4 Malian adults can read and write), where thousands of children never go to school, and those who do see the inside of a classroom face massive overcrowding, teachers with little or no training, and an education system that is, at best, outdated. For girls, the situation is even worse, with fewer than 1 in 5 literate Malian women and the country's recent rating as the 5th worst place on earth to be born female.

One of the great, if often heart wrenching, things about our project is that it gives us a window into these issues on the very human scale of the students we see every day. I am currently watching a 9th grader slowly make his way through a book designed to teach reading to preschoolers. This same student often comes to help me in the library when his teachers show up late to class, often by more than an hour. When he is in class, he sits with around 60 other students in a dark room. If he doesn't pass the exams looming at the end of the year, he will most likely never go to high school.

The good news though, is that we also see the flip side. In the three weeks since we opened the library, this same student has come to read almost every day. He has almost finished his book and yesterday he translated an entire sentence from English to French by himself (English is a main subject on his crucial exams). Rokia, one of our  8th graders, is consistently blowing us away with her English skills and is extremely generous in helping her classmates. The school's guard has three children who come to the library every single day at lunch. Neither of their parents went to school, they cannot speak French, and they certainly cannot read. Granted, the kids often practice their karate moves instead of reading (see picture) until I use my limited Bambara to get them sitting down, but they show a genuine love of the books that is shared by almost every student at the school. The youngest one is starting to improve his letter recognition, even as he continues his mischievous antics.

The relatively small acts we accomplish, and which your donation can support, are having a big impact on the 450 or so students at this school.  We see it every day and you've heard many of the stories on this blog. Aminata who “comes to read the books” starting now in 1st grade has a better chance of rewriting her future as a woman in Mali. Ousmane has more chances to improve his vocabulary and his French, to pass his exams and to go on to become a journalist and tell the world more about what matters to him.

What it comes down to is this: if you donate to us this Holiday Season you will help...

• Employ 5 intelligent, motivated, educated Malians who are taking this chance to change their community.
• Give the 450 students at Maourou Diarra (and their friends from the neighborhood who come to the library) access to more books, more windows on the world, more words to speak and write, more chances to express themselves, and more opportunities to be well informed.
• Bring more individual attention and creative learning opportunities to children who desperately need it.
• ...and buy Tonton some new markers.

If you give as a gift for someone else, we would be thrilled provide you a card with a picture of some of the kids you have helped in their name and an explanation of what we do. It is an amazing gift. Just send us an email at contact@niamakoro-education.org, and we'll send you back a personalized card within 48 hours. Be sure to include their name in the body of the email, and if you have any other specific instructions, include those too and we'll do our best to accommodate.

Thank you, and happy holidays!

Last week at the library and....website launch!!

It has been another solid week of literacy activities, English lessons, drawing and reading at the library. The big revelation of the week was definitely the markers, though we've had to limit their use after several of them walked away during free-use hours on Tuesday. I wish I could show you the work of one of our 9^th graders who was drawing incredible scenes out of some of our books.

You can see a many examples of the beautiful gifts we've received this week in the background of our brand new, beautiful website! Check us out at: http://www.niamakoro-education.org/

The most popular literacy activity of the week was definitely the “Alphabet Olympics,” a series of short games (we got through two this week and plan to revisit this activity often) that reinforce knowledge of letters and sounds and work on French vocabulary. One highlight of my week was the fact that one team of 4^th graders came up with 8 words starting with “b” and one of them was bibliothèque (library).

We are definitely starting to build a routine and the students are rapidly adapting to library procedures. There is a group of 9^th graders who have started helping out during particularly busy hours reminding the younger children in Bambara to make sure they check their book out at the desk before they start reading and helping manage the line of kids waiting for a space at the door. It is as awesome to see them taking that kind of ownership of the space as it is to see them coming in to read on their own.

Essays from Ousmane Bathily - 9 th Grade

We would like to introduce you to Ousmane Bathily, one of our 9th grade students. He is interested in becoming a journalist so we asked him to write about his life to share here on the blog. The French is his own and the English is my translation with some minor changes made for flow. He would like to write more articles, so if you have any suggestions for subjects, please add them in the comments and we'll let him know. So here it is, Ousmane Bathily's first by-lines:

Maourou Diarra

Maourou Diarra est un école située dans un quartier moins riche appelé Niamakoro. Dans ce quartier les habitants sont fatigués et rencontrent des difficultés, non seulement la pauvreté, mais aussi une manque d'eau et d'électricité. Il n'y que peu de robinets que l'on ne rencontre seulement dans grandes rues. Maourou Diarra est un Cour privé. Elle est composée de petite section à 9ème année. D'après les autres classes il y a deux 9èmes, 9ème A et B, une salle d'informatique et une salle bibliothèque un projet amené par les américains pour aider les élèves à mieux parler et écrire la langue anglaise et française. Elle n'a pas un très bon entourage ni toilette et chaque classe compte plus de 45 élèves mais malgré tout les élèves débrouillent bien.

(English translation):
Maourou Diarra is a school located in a poorer neighborhood called Niamakoro. In this neighborhood, residents are weary and encounter many difficulties, not only poverty, but also a lack of water and electricity. There are only a few water taps and they can only be found in the larger streets. Maourou Diarra is a private school. It is made up of classes from kindergarten to 9th grade. After the other classes there are two 9th grades, 9th A and 9th B,  and a computer room and library brought by an American project to help the students speak and write better in French and English. It is not in a very nice area, there are no toilets and each class has more than 45 students, but in spite of all this the students manage well.


Village

Mon village s'appelle Moussala du nom de son fondateur Moussa Maniat Bathily, grand chasseur originaire de Lany Toinla. Il se situe sur la rive gauche du fleuve Sénégal à 35km de Kayes à l'ouest. Selon mes grands parents, Moussala n'a subit aucun changement toutes les formes aux temps jadis seulement de sa création à nos jours il s'est diviser en deux: et cela due au phénomène naturel érosion fluvial qui détruit plusieurs maisons. Mais aux fils années, par le courage l'honneur et la solidarité des habitants des nouvelles constructions se succédèrent à 100m de Moussala d'où le nom Moussala Moderne.

Les évènements les plus marquants sont les suivants. La bataille de Diyalla Khoslo et la succession de Moussa Maniat. Quand ElHadji Oumar répandait l'Islam lors de son passage pour le pèlerinage à la Mecque. Il négocia avec les trois frères braves guerriers de son village: Moussa Mariat Khanson d'accord pour détruire Diyalla Khaso et le soumettre à l'Islam. Ainsi Diyallo Khoslo fut capturé et soumi à l'Islam. Après cette bataille Moussa Maniat tomba gravement malade pui va mourir étant en promenade. La mort le problème de successions le posa entrainent aussi une guerre fratercide entre ces deux fils:Yougou-Siné et Séré-Sackée.

Actuellement mon village compte 4 quartiers: Bathily-Kamy, Nodi-Kany, Kamoudou-Kany et Kochén pholé. Comme aujourd'hui des trois y sont élaborées et il n'y aura pas de conflits. Chacun se montre généreux.

(English translation):
My village is called Moussala, named for its founder Moussa Maniat Bathily, a great hunter from Lany Toinla. It is located on the left bank of the Senegal River 35km west of Kayes. According to my grandparents, Moussala had not changed at all between its creation and the present except that it was divided in two and that was because of a natural phenomenon, river erosion, that destroyed several houses. But over time, through the courage, honor, and solidarity of the residents, new construction occurred 100m from Moussala, which explains the name Moussala Moderne (modern Moussala).

The most significant events for the village were the battle of Diyalla Khoslo and the succession of Moussa Maniat. When ElHadji Oumar spread Islam after his pilgirmage to Mecca he negotiated with three brothers from his village who were brave warriors. Moussa Mariat Khanson agreed to destroy Diyalla Khoslo and force it to submit to Islam. Thus Diyalla Khoslo was destroyed and converted to Islam. After this battle, Moussa Mariat fell gravely ill and died before returning home. His death created a succession conflict and led to a fratricidal war between his two sons: Yougou-Siné and Séré-Sackée.

Today, my village has 4 neighborhoods:  Bathily-Kamy, Nodi-Kany, Kamoudou-Kany et Kochén Pholé. There will be no more conflict, each is a generous place.