On education- mine & Burundian

Here's what I was going to write on Wednesday night.


I must introduce the newest faculty member at the University of Teaching Sara Kirundi. Her name is Katia, she's Jonathan's older sister and she's been joining us at the work camp for the last week and a half. She has huge almond shaped eyes, closely shaved hair which is the fashion for young girls and though she is much more shy than her brother her extremely innocent face hides a sneaky side. She's the inventor (near as I can tell) and master (certainly) of a game with which we occasionally while away the time we spend waiting for things to do. It involves tossing a small pebble into the lap of whoever is not looking at you. Then when you try to figure out who threw the pebble, all you see are fingers pointing at someone else. All while you're trying toss pebbles into someone else's lap without getting caught. This sooner or later devolves into a tickle off and the exchange of the English and Kirundi words for the phenomenon of tickling. (In Kirundi the infinitive is Kudigadigwa- very onomatopoeic.)



She joined in the Kirundi vocabulary lessons and when she saw that I was interested in learning songs in Kirundi she proceeded to attempt to teach me an entire, complicated song by rote. Fabrice, my other Kirundi song teacher and a grown up has only ever given me the chorus to learn, four or five lines at most and we write them down first. This was a full song and though I started bringing a little notebook with me to keep track of vocabulary, I didn't happen to have it with me the two days Katia was teaching the song.

She's pretty amazing. She'd sing a line for me and I'd try to sing it back. When I got it wrong- and I always did- she'd repeat more slowly. I'd try again and get closer. Not good enough. She slows down even more and carefully enunciates each syllable. She has it down to a science the breaking down and then stringing back together of words and phrases. If I get it right she says, "Encore" and makes me do it again. If I get it wrong and try to laugh it off, oh isn't it funny how I'm making a hash of this line, she never cracks a smile but gives me this total teacher look which says "Laugh all you want missy, we're not leaving til you get it right." Duly chastened I listen to her repeat the line and try again. By the end of our second session I was able to get each line individually but couldn't remember the whole song at once. She then taught me a simpler song, a children's song which is basically various repetitions of "I love you Jesus" in Kirundi, Swahili, French and English. All the songs I have been taught are church songs, everyone we've met is devout to their bones.



Tuesday David Zarembka, the founder of AGLI came to the clinic to visit and meet with the FWA staff and check in on things so Adrien, Jonathan and Katia's dad, was at the clinic all day and walked with us to lunch at the restaurant. On the way Jonathan and Katia showed me off to him like a prize spaniel. I was put through my paces of tree identification (which let me remind you involves not only knowing the Kirundi names but also being able to tell the difference between a mango and a papaya tree- without fruit!). Katia and I sang the easy song and Adrien pronounced it all well done.

Time and time again, Burundians have asked me why I'm bothering to learn Kirundi when I will be here for just a month and it is only spoken in Burundi. There are at least five answers: that it's something to do at night as a change from writing or reading, that I like puzzles, that I like to learn things, that every word I learn is one more little thing to pick out of the conversations going on all around me, that it's something fun to do with Jonathan and Katia. But the real and true 6th reason is that I'm delighted by how happy it makes the Burundians to hear me speak their language even if it's only a few words. And not just the people I've come to know who have watched my vocabulary grow, have tracked my progress and helped to teach me. Strangers on the street to whom I say Mwiriwe instead of Bon soir, even beggars to whom I say Oya instead of No or Non will laugh and ask how I know Kirundi. The effort to payoff ratio is very high.

I want to speak of Burundian education because it is so very important to the Burundians. I think if you ask any given Burundian what their country needs most, 'Education' would come second only to 'Peace'.

So here's my understanding of how it works. Starting at 6 years old in Bujumbura, 7 up country, kids go to primary school. This is free and lasts 6 or 7 years. The free part may only be recent, a program of the current president. Then comes secondary school and here's where it gets different. There are a small number of public schools which are inexpensive, good schools to which a child must apply for acceptance. If he or she is not accepted, private school is the only alternative. It is expensive and sometimes not very good because once they have your money they have little incentive to teach well. It is in secondary school that children begin to learn French, unless they are taught at home. Secondary school is therefore necessary to get any kind of government or service sector kind of job. It also takes 6 or 7 years to complete. University can take anywhere from 4 to 7 or 8 years, depending on what is being studied and is very expensive. Throw a 13 year civil war into the mix and you have a lot of people desperate for education and mostly at their wit's end about how to get it.

Part of what this means is that students both in secondary school and at university are older than their American counterparts. Some because the war interrupted their studies, some because they can only take classes at night or a few at a time as they work for the money to pay for them. It sometimes seems as if everyone we know here is a student. Odette, Jonathan and Katia's mother, just took her final university exam this morning. Marcelline is taking classes, so is Desire, so are both Marie Claire and her husband. Grethe just finished university. Fabrice hopes to go back soon.

Everyone takes their studies incredibly seriously having paid so much in both effort and money just to get in the door. I noticed it even just in our AVP workshop. We were each given a little paper notebook, the kind we use in the US for taking written final exams. The Burundians were avid note takers. They copied every word of everything posted on the wall, drew diagrams- sometimes even staying in through a break to finish- and also of what was said. These are people for whom education- any kind of education about anything- is a gift not to be squandered. And the part that kills you is that once they graduate, even with a university degree, jobs are still incredibly difficult to get. But what else can they do? Just keep putting one foot in front of the other on the path to the only hope they know.