What does it take for a secondary school in Norway, or somewhere else in the affluent world, to call for a major celebration with cutting of ribbon and all...? This came to mind when I went through the local newspaper The Nation this week. I had earlier read about the man, Robson Zgambo, who had won the significant money prize in a lottery. Instead of spending the money on himself or the family, he was concerned about girls in his home area of Nkhata Bay along the northern shores of Lake Malawi. Their rate of graduation from secondary school was low, and the man wanted to contribute to their success in pursuing an educational career. He therefore decided to use his prize money on a secondary school. What was needed to promote the girls' education? ...Toilets...! His wife supported him fully and shared with the newspaper that:"...the girls at the school failed to excel in their education because of lack of sanitation facilities...".
The inauguration of the toilets was worth a celebration with cutting of ribbon and speeches by local dignitaries in addition to words of thanks from the principal and representatives of the girls. We know the physiological changes in girls when they reach puberty, and lack of sanitary facilities obviously cause regular gaps in their school attendance. I wonder if Norwegian secondary school girls would have any possibility to understand the joy of cutting the ribbon in order to access a toilet...
The story must certainly be understood in the context of Malawi. In today's paper there was a story about a primary school that had waited for 28 years- and was still waiting - on four classrooms for their students to be built. For all these years they had to gather under a thatched open space. This is one of many stories that tell about the state of education in this country.
Coming back to secondary school; I met a secondary school teacher from Scotland who was an exchange teacher in Dedza, about 90 km south of Lilongwe. She shared her experiences, and expressed a certain surprise - without good reason, according to her - that secondary school students were more or less like secondary school students in Scotland. Some of them could not care less about education and had high levels of absenteeism, while others put all the energy and passion into their school work. Conditions are different, but human nature seems to have a lot of similarities around the world.
Talking about Dedza, there is an interesting pottery in that place. They are producing a wide variety of pottery with African design, partly special design made on request by customers. We have some of them in our kitchen. What does this have to do with education? Probably not much,... except that some people have fortunately learned important skills.
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