I lace up my shoes, fill up my water bottle, and head out the door. Waving to the nuns roaming in the courtyard, I shout a “À toute a l’heure!” and begin trotting down the steps. Heading past the convent walls, I hop across a creek and set off on my run down the rust-red dusty path of the small Togolese town of Atakpame.
The past couple months have been interesting ones out here in Togo, complete with new adventures and old faces. At the end of May I was blessed with a visit from my sister Gretchen. Fresh off her glacier guiding contract in New Zealand, she decided to take the long way home and pass through a few countries, Togo included. It was fantastic, and in some ways bizarre, so see someone from my other (dare I say “real”?) life out here. Usually when I go abroad I have the impression that I've teleported to another dimension for a year because I rarely get visitors from “back home”. Anyways, Bro and Sis did some major backpacking around Togo: hiking mountains, checking out fetish markets, and meeting the locals. I think my sister got a few dozen marriage proposals while here (and to be fair, so did I!). We also took a weekend trip to the bizarrely modern capital of Ghana, Accra. In all, it was a great time.
Jogging past crumbling farm homes and curious onlookers, I wind around rolling green hills, eventually trudging up to the top of one small “mountain” (using directions from random farmers), which rewarded me with a majestic sunset-filled view of the lush, mountainous valley. Heading down the other side, I accidentally cut across someone’s front yard, and start down a dirt path deep into the thick, tropical forest.
June has seen somewhat of a change of scenery for me. I've spent the month up in a small mountain town called Atakpame, as a guest lecturer at teacher training college. It’s a beautiful place and, as evidence of my earlier narrative, a great place for adventure runs J. The teacher training college is actually one of only two that exist in Togo, and the ONLY one training teachers for middle schools. It has proven to be a really inspiring experience. After spending months working with teachers who have almost no training in pedagogy or educational theory, I now find myself with a group of young teachers-to-be who have a foundation in all of it. These teacher training colleges used to function for years, but closed their doors during a period of civil unrest in the 90’s, and didn't reopen until about 3 years ago. So I get the pleasure of teaching the first class of graduates since its reopening.
Another real entertaining aspect of my time here is that they have me staying at a convent. Yes a convent. I live in a convent in the hills of Africa. It’s like the novel-writer’s paradise! It’s where the college decided for me to stay (“so you can be closer to God” as they told me), and thus I spend a lot of time hanging out with nuns. I even went on a hike with a nun. It’s all a lot like the Sound of Music. Only a very very African Sound of Music.
I eventually come upon a small village on the outskirts of town. Probably 7 months ago I would have felt rather uncomfortable just “popping in” to this village that likely hadn't seen a white guy in months. However living in Africa has a way of dissolving any notion of when you should and should not feel awkward (not that I was very adept at this to begin with), and so here I am, bouncing through town and saying hi to bewildered people without a sense of how weird it must have been for them. To be fair, the villagers appear delighted to meet the curious stranger in their midst. One man, Olivier, joins me on my run for a few minutes, eventually taking me to the home of his friend, a “traditional medicine practitioner” (aka voodoo witch doctor), who shows me his charms and explains how they help you see the past and future, (or “kill the man who slept with your wife”... as he further elaborated). Another man, Koffi, takes me to the home of his brother and introduced me to the entire family. Later a group of teens invite me to join them for soccer the later in the week!
Working with these teacher trainees has gotten me thinking a lot about education in Africa, and the nature of my work here. Like most developing counties, Togo faces similar hurdles in the classroom: absurdly large classes, almost zero resources for both teachers and students, and depressingly meager pay. However, what concerns me more is the lack of pride many of the teaches feel in their profession, or country. I remember a presentation that one of my teacher trainee students Amouzou gave on critical thinking:
“Okay class, as we are talking about using critical thinking today, I have one last question before we finish... Look at this sentence. After analyzing it, what tense do you think it is in?" The class pondered the phrase "One day, Togo will become a stable and developed country" that Amouzou had scrawled on the chalk board. "The future tense?" asked Akpandja . "No!" Shouted Amouzou "The conditional?" suggested Dagadou, "No again!” Amouzou responded. “Ready for the answer? The IMPOSSIBLE future!"
Although clever, Amouzou’s joke underscores the rather pessimistic outlook I have observed many Togolese sharing about their country’s future... a perspective which trickles down to their outlook for their own profession as teachers. During one group discussion, I gave my students the prompt “what are advantages you have from learning to be a teacher in Togo?”, and the first idea someone suggested was “well, as teachers we know how to fast well, as we don’t get enough money to eat.” (On a humorous side-note, another student added, “also when we get sent to villages to teach, many mothers will offer their daughters to us for marriage!”).
To be fair, for all the conditions described above Togolese have a lot of reason to be frustrated with the movement of their country, and the outlook of their careers as teachers. Also the international donor community doesn't help when they basically give the message: you lack money, your methods are outdated, etc. etc. Things need to change. And its true that there is a lot of need in the education sector here. However what kills me is that there many are good things happening in classrooms here that I see all the time, especially with home-grown solutions to their work challenges, which simply seem to be glossed over. When the message from outside, "developed world" constantly is: "Here, use our more 'modern' methods for your classroom that are so much better", of course Togolese are not going to reflect on the validity of the solutions they have created themselves. I imagine, with some guilt, that this is also why I'm afforded so much respect here as a "teaching specialist". I come from a donor country that is perceived as "knowing more".
But let’s think about learning in African classrooms for a minute. One of my expat friends pointed out to me once that “you know, the funny thing is, despite all the supposed problems, the students still seem to learn English.” I thought about this, and it’s true! I can’t speak to other subjects, but as far as English goes, not only do students here learn English, they learn in relatively well! And even using all those “outdated methodologies” that supposedly inhibit their learning. Thinking about it further, I realize that I am essentially here to “combat” those old methodologies by promoting the modern, evolved theories about teaching and language learning that I learned in the US. But let’s be completely honest with ourselves: How strong are Americans really in foreign languages? Another irony is training teachers to teach large class sizes and with little resources. I devoted two years of grad school to researching proper pedagogy for these situations, but I've learned more in 8 months from observing teachers here on managing large classes and low resources then during all of grad school. Ironically most of the research I read at grad school on large classes/low resources came from Western scholars who had relatively very little exposure to large classes compared to the educators I work with here. So one has to ask: where is all the research from developing nations that actually experience this reality?
Before I begin to sound too much like I’m trashing American education, let me just clarify that I think the United States has a great education system that I’m proud to be a product of. In fact, I truly believe that one of the biggest strengths in US education is our ability to develop critical thinking and leaderships skills, something I see lacking in education systems even in parts of Europe and other industrialized countries. I think my main point is this: Different countries have different obstacles, and thus have experience learning to deal with those obstacles. So instead of assuming that just because Africa is poor and their methodology is a bit outdated that clearly what goes on in the classroom is insufficient, lets also focus on what they have learned to do well because they deal with certain challenges every day, and what we can learn from their experiences, such as how to create animated classes when you have over 100 students and little resources. I guess I’m trying to say that rich countries may often have the resources, but they don’t always have all the answers.
After leaving the village, I bushwhack through banana trees to the top of another hill (apparently the trail they sent me on did not really exist), and find myself in a clearing at the top of the mountain with a magnificent view of the entire valley. After accidentally surprising a farmer at the top (“How did you end up here!?”), I am given 5 ears of corn as a gift, and sent on my way down a path that winds beautifully over the hills. At one point a group of kids run along for about 15 minutes with me (to be fair I invited them). eventually I arrive back at the convent just as the blood-red sunset begins to give way to a creeping blue dusk, and am greeted by the lovely sound of African Catholic hymns being sung from the nearby Cathedral. I take a deep, refreshingly cool breath, and head inside. And so goes another day in Atakpame.
-Phil
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