Sunday, February 6, 2011

Back to Africa

One of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Home, one feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood... A journey, in fact, appeals to Imagination, to Memory, to Hope, -the three sister graces of our moral being.
- Sir Richard Francis Burton



I always find it a thrill to come back to a country I haven't seen in some years.

Two years back Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was my sanctuary after having fled Cairo, a city I view with extreme distaste and whose charm and allure has changed little since rioters began burning down half the city in recent days. Consequently I immediately fell in love with Addis, a city with tasty food, good beer, beautiful women, friendly inhabitants, and tree-lined boulevards. Sure, the smog was still pretty bad, the touts (Swahili, meaning "tick" . . . usually teenage boys trying to rip off tourists) insufferable, and the tap water sometimes a disconcerting color of red. But after Cairo it was a God-send.

Later on Addis was my stop after leaving Somaliland, a infinitely better experience than Cairo but still a place where I had lost twenty-five pounds in a month and a half. Addis, with its cheap food, was a brief stop for me to gain back a few pounds before continuing onward into the southern deserts.

This time, I viewed the city through the lens of someone just having left America. While it is wonderful to be back I realized quickly that I had neglected to steal myself for the this-is-Africa, inshallah, chaotic lifestyle that had seemed so natural by the end of my last trip to the continent. Africa is Africa and no matter how much I like somewhere here it is still wildly different from the comparitvely calm lifestyle in the US. My first day, dodging careening cars, avoiding the prostitutes and hearing "ferengi!" - a rather insulting term for "foreigner" - screamed at me by children everywhere, served as something of a shock to my system.

Fortunately it took only that first day to turn my mind around about the place. I remembered oddly specific directions around the city ( “ . . . turn right at the second Oil Libya . . .) and wandered to some of my old restaurants. I relaxed and read, chatted with other backpackers, got a little sunburned, and made some friends amongst the locals. I dove right into drinking tapwater but surprisingly got few results, my body evidently keeping any immunities it needed from the last time around. The food was likewise easy on me and that alone tempted me to stay a bit longer, but I was anxious to get to Somaliland.

I've made little secret in recent months over my hopes for this trip, one that will hopefully combine both business and pleasure. The recent riots have ensured my planned trip to Yemen is a no-go and a decision by the Somaliland Liason Office's in Addis to only grant me a single-entry visa has also nixed my Kenya plans; consequently my tentative schedule says that the next three months will be in Somaliland, the autonomoius enclave of northern Somalia.

For my hopeful treks everything is still up in the air for the moment. The Sanaag Region, a mountainous hard-to-reach area which lies on the Puntland border and has been my dream to explore for two years, is high on my list. Same with the lower-Awdal on the other side of the country. Maybe, if the gods will it, I'll end up heading back to my old stomping grounds from my previous Somaliland trek as well.

But my main purpose here this time around isn't the trekking. Instead, I'm going to be trying to navigate the ministries in an attempt to get permission for a small non-profit that I'm hoping to start up this summer.

I hope you'll bear with me here for a moment while I delve into a brief story that relates to this.

Last time, going from village to village in some areas that even the the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the central government failed to penetrate, I would run across the occasional and inexplicable English speaker. Regardless of whether it was a child or an elder, I always made it a point to ask out of shear curiosity what, if anything, they wanted in their village. To a person, everyone said a school.

For the first couple weeks it was a mere side-note to what I was doing and I thought little of it. Towards the end of the trek, however, still well into the interior and far from any roads or paths, I came to a small village whose name now escapes me but whose faces I’ll remember for a long while.

The village had around seventy to eighty people. The poverty and malnourishment was telling, yet the village lived because it housed the only water well for miles around. Even though I know little of grazing needs it was clear on my walk in that the soil was of poor quality and the entire area was suffering the consequences of over-grazing.

One of the men there spoke some English. He was very proud, he told me, to show the first white man he had ever seen around the village.

Clearly there was little to actually see. The goat and camel pens, the dirgid (sleeping area for passing nomads), and the various huts. The well, of course, which he saved to the near end.

Finally, he announced, we would see the school. He led me towards a small enclosure about 15X15 feet. It was supported on two sides with large pieces of corrugated tin and a third side with unrooted thorn bush. On top lay more thorn bush to shield the kids from the sun. The students, who looked as young as four and as old as fourteen, were drawing in the dirt for lack of paper and were being taught by a man holding up a torn piece of cardboard.

Looking at the only school I saw for seventy miles in each direction, next to a man so proud of it, I felt positively devastated. Angry, really.

I was angry that anyone who wanted education received one of such unbelievably poor caliber. I was angry that there was no support from anyone outside the village in what they were trying to accomplish. I was angry at myself for thinking so negatively about the place. But most of all I was angry because I knew it wasn’t enough, that these efforts would fall short of helping the village or its inhabitants in any tangible way.

Still, for the benefit of my guide I tried to look impressed and so I asked him what subject the children were learning.

“Here, there is one subject," he answered. "Math.”

I looked at the dirt. It was simple addition.

When I asked if there was any sort of vocational teaching he answered passively, saying the village had been made of a collection of refugees two decades before and any skills their home villages had once had were lost in transit. Math, he implied, was really the best and only thing they could teach. There was no resources for any further teaching. They would have liked a real school or even some teaching material I was told, but no help had come from the outside. He didn't expect any in the future, either.

These kids - the village - were trying. They all wanted to learn and were proud of this pitiful step forward, a step that ultimately would do the children no good and not change their future one iota. The land could not support their population growth without some sort of change. Proper grazing patterns, animal husbandry, frankincense collection, and any other of the possible avenues for making their lives better were simply not known and not being taught. The best that they could do was figure out their livestock numbers.

Despite their best efforts their children would not be educated. They would not have better lives.

This was not a case where an opportunity was there and passed up; this was a case where no opportunity existed . . . and one never would.

I left the village that day and continued on my trek. But that experience has stayed with me, always nagging me, always reminding me of a job that needs to be started. Because those villages are all over Somaliland and Somalia. Parents who want their children to learn and succeed, who want their children to have better lives than they had. One-room schools missing two sides held together by twine, without pencils or paper or proper teachers. Boys and girls whose future holds a way of life ever-squeezed by unsustainable population growth with no other option than to keep walking the increasingly over-herded countryside.

That was the seed that was planted in my mind two years ago. Since then I have thought more and more about education in Somaliland. There is a model of school creation and sustainability made famous by Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea, Stones into Schools) that I would like to turn into a pilot project in rural Somaliland. This model incorporates working with – and not over – local elders and officials in the building and teaching process, a vocational center for post-primary graduates that teaches local practices, the taking-over of the school by the locals as the graduates are able to start earning money, and the extremely important point of an equal participation rate between the genders within four years of the school opening

There are a number of similarities between the regions of tribal Pakistan and Afghanistan that his NGO works in and rural Somaliland. Among those similarities are populations that are under threat of becoming radicalized due to outside forces (in Somaliland’s case these forces are al Shabab from southern Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Yemen, and madrassas being funded by conservative Muslim factions from Saudi Arabia), a rural population that is not being reached by the government or NGOs, and a marginalized female population whose collective and individual futures can be drastically improved with education. That last point is one that is the most important to me though I’ll get into reasoning in a later post.

So, in tying up this long post, I’m in Somaliland to see if I can get permission for a pilot project that incorporates much of the Mortenson model of school creation. I’ve never before delved in to the non-profit world and am quite nervous at the prospect, but a number of my friends and family have been helping and encouraging me in recent months with the initial planning stages. This has given me a huge boost in confidence and I owe everyone who I have talked with a good deal.

Still, I've approached this trip with more trepidation than any other I've taken before and that is in large part due to this potential pilot project. Truthfully, I was initially hesitant to even write anything about it because as I look at the potential hurdles ahead (unwilling officials, lack of enthusiasm from the villages, a bad education model, access to my region of choice not being granted) I'm nervous that what I've been thinking about for so long will be extremely difficult to accomplish. Time will tell, I suppose.

The ministries were extremely responsive the last time I was in Somaliland so I have great hope that they will help me along the way. Likewise Somaliland itself if filled with amazingly friendly and helpful people, some of whom I've kept in touch with these last two years and I'm sure will be able to offer advice.

One way or another it’s all going to be an adventure and those are fun, so I’ve decided not to fret too terribly much.

Cheers to Minnesota, though truthfully it is very wonderful to be back to Africa once again.

5 comments:

Alexis said...

Good luck, Peter, I'm rooting for you!

Kay said...

Scared as hell for your safety, but I'm proud of you! :D

Jackie said...

I posted a comment the other day, but it seems to be missing.
Best of luck to you,Peter, on this latest venture.
Your courage is truly admirable.

Unknown said...

Peter - your passion for what you are doing is inspiring! I'm thinking about somehow sharing what you have experienced with Somaliland education with my students, who don't get that education is such a gift! I do like that the only subject was math though ;) Hugs and prayers. Take care!

Unknown said...

Omar coming!