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jambo
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 Posted - 04 Jun 2009 : 16:57:24
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http://observer.gm/africa/gambia/article/a-tale-of-2-lucky-girls
A tale of 2 lucky girls
Africa » Gambia
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Neneh Ceesay and Meta Ceesay are two teenage girls with a touching tale.
They are more like twin sisters, although they do not come from the same family, and their story is so identical that for an ordinary observer they are kind of inseparable. The two girls live in a village called Sami Pachonki in Sami District in the Central River Region (CRR) North. Sami Pachonki is a predominantly Mandinka settlement with a population of over 4000, and it is said to be the largest in the entire district. The peculiarity about this settlement of a place is the sheer indifference of its people towards western education. Not even government’s unconditional effort to lure the people into taking their children to school by providing the necessary incentive could change their inclination.
A lower basic school with staff quarters that is arguably bigger than what you can find in the rest of the region, among other facilities, is supposed to serve as a blessing for the people, but their lack of interest hardly go unnoticed. This is a fact which disturbs Sait Saine, deputy head master of Sami Lower Basic School.
It was Saine who informed the Daily Observer about lucky Neneh and Meta. These two girls are lucky because they were the first to have completed senior secondary in the whole of Sami Village, which got its first school since 1981. According to Sait Saine, percentage enrolment at Sami Pachonki Lower Basic School has always been between 15 and 20. Currently, the school has an enrolment figure of 250 students. But despite the low gender parity in enrolment, it is just a matter of time for the girls to dropout. The factors are many, but forced early marriage, farming and domestic work bear the sole responsibility of the failure of the children of the village to complete their education. And girls are the most neglected.
The simple explanation to this, stressed Deputy Head Master Sait Saine, is that the people of Sami Pachonki and its catchments areas do not prioritise western education especially that of the girl child. Girls, he said, are easily forced into marriage at an early age, thus making it difficult for them to push on with their educational career. But Neneh Ceesay and Meta Ceesay defied all the obstacles. How they did it they themselves cannot say.
They both attended Sami Pachanki Primary School, Karantaba Upper Basic School and then Farafenni Senior Secondary School, where they graduated in 2008, before being employed by the Department of State for Basic and Secondary Education as unqualified teachers. Meta teaches at Sami Pachonki Lower Basic School, while Neneh teaches at Bayaba Lower Basic School.
Meta Ceesay is clearly dissatisfied with the low enrolment of girls in her village, and she sounds grateful to be part of history. But she is “worried that since the school was built in 1981, no girl has completed high school education from here. When we were going to school, a lot of people used to tell our parents to send us out of school. They even told our parents that if we continued, we would be pregnant and that we will end up disgracing them in the society.”
These two girls are now some kind of goodwill ambassadors. Neneh told the Daily Observer that they go round the village to sensitive parents on the importance of girl’s education, as well as encourage them to send their children to school. Her message to her people is that they should desist from forcing their children to get married to semesters (returning hustlers from Europe or the Americas), all because of the urge for wealth. Neneh and Meta, despite their level of education at the national level, remain heroines among their peers, most of whom are now older than them. Fatoumata Tambajang Hydara is the head mistress of Sami Pachonki Lower Basic School. She described the enrolment level at the school as discouraging. But she said that all the problem lies on the fact that parents do not seem to be aware of the importance of education. Hydara dreads the rainy season, for it is the period that they realise mass withdrawal of the children from school, in the name of helping hand at the farms.
Neneh and Meta may have escaped, but there are many more like them who may not. Their resolve to rescue these people will surely be much enhanced if they are given the much needed support. Support in the form of scholarship is the best thing for them now.
Author: by Assan Sallah just back from Sami
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