Girls Education Conference – Ça va aller

Part I

A week after the soccer game (see previous post "Girls Conference This Sunday… Er, Next Sunday"), the "Caravane pour l'education de la jeune fille" went off pretty much without a hitch.

The Friday and Saturday before the original date of the Girls Conference, I had run out of things to do; all I had to do was show up.  Now with the conference pushed back a week, I really had nothing to do for the whole week leading up to it.  I made and printed out new flyers to pass out and re-lined up the speakers, while Yotti helped to make and pass out invitations.  (In Lagdo, people are picky about community-wide meetings they attend and won't show up if not invited.)

On the day of the event, everything couldn't have gone smoother.  Yotes and I (I never say Yotti "Yotes" – like "note" – aloud, just in my head.) went by the mayor's house and found out he was actually going to speak, and then we went to the meeting hall expecting to have to bust some heads to get the room arranged in time, but when we got there, all the chairs were set up, the floor was swept, and the sound equipment was there and just needed to be plugged in.  Excellent!  So, I went home, made a few changes to the speech I would give to welcome everybody and killed some time.  (Harvard wrote the speech, I just changed "Ngong" to "Lagdo" wherever necessary.)

Part II

Since it's Cameroon, no one really showed up until between 30-60 minutes after the advertised time, but since it's Cameroon, there were two or three people who came right at 13h00 and sat there in silence for another 90 minutes.  The speakers were relatively punctual, so all I had to do was wait for an audience to arrive.

I was really nervous leading up to the program about attendance.  Sending out invitations and posting flyers and making announcements in churches in the morning possibly wasn't enough.  I stood outside watching the road to see who was pulling up or walking in, and a dozen or so invitees wandered in, but there were still weren't many.  Then I saw a group of high school-aged girls walking in our direction, and lo and behold, they came in.  Then a couple other groups of girls arrived and watched the program after the first, so we were really happy about that.  (In Ngong, most of the not officially invited people were kids and dudes wandering by the elementary school it was at.)  Yotti told me later that the girls live in his quartier, so he cajoled them into coming.  Way to go, Yotes!

So, all told, there were about 60 in the audience, half of them young women from the high school, not as many as I hoped but good for a rescheduled event on a Sunday afternoon.  (It would have been preferable to have it on Saturday, but that's market day.)

I called the mayor so he and the sous-préfet could head over to the meeting room (they don't arrive until everything is set up so they can arrive and immediately start), and the three speakers got up on the dais and Harvard and I greeted the officials, and we were off.

I made my eloquent, impassioned welcoming speech, bringing tears to the eyes of even the most hardened cotton farmers in attendance and sprinkling "yes, we cans" (Oui, nous pouvons.) at appropriate moments until the whole room got up and walked the streets in support of sending their girls to school.  You really had to be there.  After I finished, the mayor, who was on deck, was visibly shaking and sweating with fear.  How could he follow that up?  But he was courageous and emoted off of a handful of talking points, and then he passed the baton to the sous-préfet, who officially opened up our caravan in support of girls in school and Peace Corps.  Change we can believe in.

The high school principal gave a wandering speech, but he did link up a lack of education and prostitution, a really good point.  The second speech was the directrice of a local primary school.  When I approached her to speak, she was really excited to spout some wisdom on the subject of the benefits of an educated women in the context of the home, mainly that a women who is educated can make better decisions financially and for their children's health, as well as someone who's more likely to instill the value of education in their kids.  She was a good speaker, and I think she was the most looking forward to the caravan.

The final speaker was a woman who is an administrative assistant at the UNHCR office in Garoua.  (United Nations High Commission on Refugees – there is a Chadian refugee camp outside of Pitoa, 30k or so from Garoua.  Have I not mentioned that before?  Anyway…) The audience loved her speech.  It went over so well because she obviously killed while in school and matter-of-factly gave a history of her education and work history.  High school at the best high schools in the north (applause); graduated from university in Yaoundé (applause); two years working at a call box (where you sell cell phone credit), then a sweet job with the UN in Cameroon, traveling all the country (applause); all that while married to a supportive husband and raising four kids and putting them all through school (applause).  The audience loved it; they reacted the same way when she spoke in Ngong.  Despite all the problems with education in Cameroon, people really do appreciate a successful person who took school seriously and make something of themselves.  And she was from the North province to boot!  It really hit home.

After the three official speakers were finished, there was a discussion session for the audience, where they could ask a question or just add their two cents.  Some of the questions were a little awkward ("Mr. Principal, what can we do about school fees?  When we can't afford to send our kids to school?"  I think he evaded the question.); pretty good, like what concrete results we want from this event; but most questions were about Peace Corps' role in all of this.  I had to give a little spiel about Peace Corps' sustainable development goals, and explain to the primary school superintendent in the audience that, "No, Peace Corps can't do anything to improve elementary school test scores."  (I think these questions were just indirect demands for money.  Whenever someone who doesn't know what Peace Corps is asks what PC can do for such-and-such, that's what they really mean.  And now I can't take the superintendent seriously.)  But the main theme, from our (Peace Corps) view, of the discussion was that this event is only one thing in a long-range development goal of the UN, Peace Corps, international NGOs, and the Cameroonian government itself to increase girls' education participation.  There is only so much Westerners can do; we can't force you to enroll your child in school or make your school's test records look better to your boss.

However, the discussion showed to me that people are interested in the subject and that there are a lot of issues to tackle, mainly cultural I think.  The Ngong high school principal at the Ngong "aller" said that out of 1500 students at his school, only 200 are girls.  That kind of disparity is not just a financial thing. 

After the Lagdo event, people were still talking about it at the mayor's house (we had food there after it was over), with a big discussion with the mayor himself and a couple school officials on education funding in Lagdo, not a normal occurrence, highlighted by the mayor going line by line on different things the commune is funding. (Even though I think the mayor has stolen a lot of money, he is one charismatic and smart SOB and a good politician.  That's a nice way of saying he's a crook, n'est-ce pas?)

Overall, the Caravan went really well.  At both of the events, attendance was not what we hoped it would be, but it's pretty hard to get people to go to things, especially something that's basically a lecture series.  We had about 60 people in Lagdo and 100 in Ngong, so Ngong really benefited from holding the event outdoors and having it on Saturday and not Sunday.  Having high school girls there really made up for the lack of people in general in Lagdo, however.  The speakers did a better job than Harvard and I thought they would, especially the UNHCR lady.  I was really happy with the mayor's support in Lagdo, allowing us to use the meeting hall, supplying the sound system for free, and using his house for food afterwards; with him and the sous-préfet themselves being there, it really added a lot of weight to the event.

I think this project reinforced to me what Peace Corps Volunteers can hope to achieve in their work: tight messages on a small group of people.  Given Peace Corps lack of funds and an unfocused overall vision, PCVs in the field succeed best when they work within a sector of their community and give clear and concise counsel and present new ideas in a careful way, so we can get support from within the community.  We're not going to change the mentality of certain people with one meeting, but we're laying the groundwork by encouraging those who understand to lead by example.