A difficult year

As we mentioned in our last post, the time since we left Mali has not been an easy one. A country that had been held up as an example of successful democracy for the last 20 years went through a military coup, a Tuareg rebellion coopted by Al Qaeda that conquered almost half the country, and an armed French intervention to push back that rebellion. I could describe these events, but in this case I will leave it to the professionals at the New York Times and their interactive timeline:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/01/18/world/africa/mali-algeria-timeline.html#/#time231_7133

For our staff and students in Niamakoro, these events brought many difficult changes. In our conversations these last several months, we heard about the closure of the school during the coup, city-wide curfews, food and fuel shortages, and a lot of mixed emotions at the arrival of the French army. Through it all, the NEP programs have continued in the service of the community and the future leaders of the country. To see some photos from library activities during this tumultuous time, check out our 2012-13 School Year album.

With the arrival of the UN peacekeepers this month and presidential elections scheduled for July 28th, it will be very interesting to see what happens next. Stay tuned for some Malian voices on these crucial moments for the country.

We're Back!

Hello Wonderful NEP Supporters!

It has been a long time since our last blog entry, but while our blog writers have been quiet, the work in Niamakoro has been anything but. We are celebrating the relaunch of our blog with three (and a half) BIG pieces of NEP news from the year we’ve missed.

1. Ninth graders show AMAZING results on the DEF.

Remember these guys?

Three of our 9th grade girls studying French grammar

In June of 2012, our first class of 9th graders took the critical DEF exam, which decides their academic futures. The pass rate at our two schools rose from 20% in 2011 (before the NEP arrived) to 67%, by far the highest of any school in Niamakoro. We are extremely proud of their hard work, and look forward to seeing where high school takes them. Our second class of 9th graders took the DEF 3 weeks ago. Their NEP teachers, Robert and Fidel, report that they were well prepared and the subjects were “theirs for the taking.” We can’t wait to hear their results!

2. The library provides a calm place in turbulent times.

Soldiers massing at ORTM, Malian state media, during the coup in March, 2012

Student artists at work with Baissou

As many of you know, this last year and half has not been a peaceful one for Mali. We’ll be providing more information here and on Facebook, but for now we want to shine a light on the hard work of NEP employees to help our students and our community during the coup and subsequent unrest. Though school was closed for several weeks, our students approached NEP staff and asked for the library to be opened. We thank our staff for providing children in Niamakoro with a place to learn and read and a sense of normalcy in highly unusual times. Academically and socially this was an invaluable service.

3. Learning is FUN in Niamakoro.

Robert works with kindergarteners building paper airplanes

One of the best things about our time since leaving Mali has been receiving bi-weekly updates from our staff in Niamakoro. Since I have become a public school teacher here in the States, we have had a great time sharing stories and strategies. Though Robert often complains that the younger children “treat him like their grandfather,” it is clear that he is doing a remarkable job of broadening their horizons with new kinds of learning. This is what the NEP is all about and we are thrilled!

3.5 I did say three and a half things. That’s because we have a couple of very exciting NEW programs, designed by our Malian staff that will be coming online very soon. Keep your eyes open for details!

We need your help to sustain our success, click here to see what you can do!

Neighborhood Pictures

Our 9th grade students have been working on a magazine (in English!) about their lives here in Bamako -- about their neighborhood, their school, Malian politics, everyday life, etc.

Here is a selection of the photographs our students took to document life in their neighborhood. See the associated captions for a short description of what you're looking at!

View of the school courtyard. The school director recently began constructing
a new wall -- you can see the canonical bricks drying in the sun.

Picture of the first graders in their classroom.

Shot of a donkey cart as it passes by.

Neighborhood children.

Picture of an alimentation, where they sell tea, sugar, cooking oil, and other
basic necessities.

A family compound. You can see a sheep in the background, and a satellite
dish (presumably to receive TV broadcasts...?).

Drawing up water from a well.

View of the street near school, around mid-morning.

Candid shot of life in the family compound.

Women preparing food in a family compound. The young woman in yellow is
one of the photographers.

View from the front of the school. The wall has now been rebuilt, and there is a sign.
Pictures to follow soon!

Picture of the third grade in their classroom.

A good week

It has been a very good week at the library. First, as we mentioned on Facebook earlier this week, we finally got our books out of customs! We now have a total of 276 titles in our library, and a much greater diversity of content. I spotted one of our 9^th grade students who is a very talented artist paging through the image pages of a book on Surrealism during recess earlier this week. Plus, the new additions make our shelves beautifully full.

We've also instituted a new policy that makes Thursday afternoons our open drawing hours. This time is already extremely popular and we've seen dozens of students coming in to draw huts, cars, people, and one particularly lovely thank you card.

Even my least favorite moment of the week served to remind me of the importance of our work. The principal of the school insisted on taking me with him to hand back report cards to the 9^th graders. This exercise in public shaming was extremely uncomfortable to witness, but the worst part was at the end when he proceeded to ask the students who had not passed their exams “Why do you make us hit you?” and tell them they were worthless. These are the same students who continue to work on their magazine and are showing a level of focus I have not seen from them previously. I am incredibly proud of their work this week, and the experience with the report cards reinforced the importance of our mission to provide a space where students are valued and encouraged to develop their potential through creative and critical thinking rather than “encouraged” through threats and humiliation. It is an important reminder to all of us that we have a responsibility to ensure that no child, no matter where they live, is made to believe that they are worthless.

Good Questions and New Technology

As we do battle with Malian bureaucracy on several fronts trying to “officialize” our organization and get our books out of customs, our everyday interactions with students continue to remind me why my 10^th trip to customs headquarters in three weeks is worth it.

Our 9^th graders are currently working on a magazine (in English!) which we are going to send to students in the United States to tell them more about life in Mali. Aside from encouraging cross-cultural communication and understanding, this project is intended to strengthen the students' knowledge of questions and verbs in English so we started by generating a massive list of questions for their American counterparts. Some gems included:

• How do they punish students there? Do they hit kids who come late? (The subversive part of me is really looking forward to when they hear the answer to this question.)
• Are students there serious?
• Is there electricity in your neighborhood? Churches? Mosques? Paved Roads? A lot of African people? Corpses? (by which we later determined he meant cemeteries.)
• Why do Americans like tourism?
• Why do you like tanning?
• What do senators do? (I wish I knew.)
• Why aren't delinquents punished in the US? (When I asked about the reasoning behind this question they said, “Lots of rap stars brag about selling drugs but they aren't in jail.” Indeed.)
• Why do rich people and poor people live apart in the US? (An excellent question, but I was surprised to hear that they thought that rich and poor live side by side here in Mali.)
• What do you do when your parents aren't home?
• Do you have boyfriends/girlfriends? What do your parents think about that?

The best part of watching the students work on this project has been seeing how they dive into topics that are of real interest to them. They are so excited to get to tell American students about their lives and genuinely curious about the lives of American students. It is so rare that anyone asks their opinion or gives them license to share their uncensored thoughts and I am proud to be a part of it. If the students give permission, we will post an electronic copy of the magazine on this blog when it is done.

I will leave you with this photo of one other exciting moment from the week – the first time one of our new ClassmatePCs (an incredible donation from Care Innovations at Intel) was used by students! When only three of our 8^th graders had shown up by 15 minutes into their class period on Monday, we decided to reward them by shutting the door and letting them play some English learning games on the computer. All three of the students said this was the first time they had used a computer and all three seemed to have a fabulous time.

Robert and the kindergarten - Video

Things at the library are definitely starting to get into a rhythm now. Robert continues to impress us all with his patience and creativity working with the children, and we see more and more kids from the neighborhood coming in to read. Here is a little video clip of the kindergarteners' time this week (video credit to my lovely father Marty Smilkstein) – Robert was reading to them from a story about two otters named Pilou and Lalie.

Now that the day to day program is running more smoothly, our focus is shifting to the administrative challenges that need to be addressed before Neal and I leave the country in 6 weeks. Our primary concern is finding a system of financial management that gives us plenty of oversight and can be managed from afar (without being a full time job), but that also allows enough flexibility for unexpected but necessary expenditures. This is, evidently, a tall order, and we are exploring lots of options, but we would love suggestions from any of you. Financial management is not a skill set with which we have a lot of experience. But rather than reinventing the wheel, we think that through the resources of our community on several continents we can come up with a solution that will be both functional and flexible. You can comment here or email us at contact@niamakoro-education.org.

New Learning in the New Year

The students came back from break with tales of how much chicken they had eaten for New Years and excited to see the wonderful selection of new books that visiting friends had brought us. I have personally enjoyed the experience of looking over old friends like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Il pleut des hamburgers) and Clifford (renamed Bertrand) translated into French. Each new group of books also highlights how surprisingly difficult it is to come up with a selection of books that our students can relate to. For example, they are hugely amused by the concept of food falling from the sky, but don't recognize about three quarters of the food that falls in Il pleut des hamburgers. I wholeheartedly believe in the power of books to transport us and give us windows to worlds we don't see everyday, but it is also important for our kids to see themselves and their experiences in books. If anyone has any suggestions of books that might help diversify our collection, please let me know.

This week was also a particularly good one for learning at the library. Robert took over teaching the elementary schoolers and he did a fantastic job. Each lesson we do underlines how much work there is to be done (only 1 of our 4^th graders wrote a complete sentence when asked this week), but we also see small signs of progress that encourage us to keep going. In the realm of small victories, things went very well with the 7^th and 8^th graders I saw this week, usually some of the more difficult groups. In one of the 7^th grade groups there are 3 female students who never do anything that is asked of them. I think I have determined this is because they also don't understand French nearly as well of their classmates. Yesterday one completed her entire assignment (write 4 sentences in English, 1 with each of the prepositions we are studying) and corrected her own errors and one got 2 sentences done. I hope that they are slowly getting the picture that they can do this. I think that after 7 years of being called imbecile by your teachers does not provide a lot of incentive to keep trying.

Our next shipment of books remains tied up in customs, but as we continue to navigate the bureaucratic maze to retrieve them, I'm excited about what's happening here everyday.