12 (thousand) Angry Students

What a time to be a schoolteacher in Tchad...

 I want make clear at the onset of this blog entry that I am super super safe and sound, describing events that have, fortunately, been brought to a halt. But it was an interesting couple of days!


 On November 3rd, the public school teachers of Tchad went on strike, demanding that they receive their proper wages. I wasn't even aware of this until last week when the private school teachers joined them in a week-long strike of solidarity. For the children of Tchad, it was an uninvited vacation. I may be incorrectly speaking for the children when I say this, but I got the sense that the students, especially girls, who didn't have the excuse of school to get them out of the house just came back home to do household chores for much of the day. And I am majorly placing my own judgment on this, but it just didn't seem like a great deal for them. It doesn't have quite the same feel as an unexpected snow day.

 I hung out patiently with the rest of the students and teachers. Then we started up again, the solidarity strike having served its purpose, hopefully. On Tuesday, I didn't actually have class so I was puttering around home in the morning. I thought I heard a commotion at my window, so I stood and looked through the shutters. I heard the swelling of voices, many of them the voices of children. We actually share our small side street with a primary school, so it is not at all uncommon for me to hear children's voices, but these seemed to be growing. Soon, I saw children running past my window. First a few, then more and more, a dense herd of little figures in their school uniforms. There was something happening, but I couldn't gage the nature of it because some students were laughing, others crying, and more in hurried conversation with their neighbors. Furthermore, people weren't all running in the same direction, as they would if being chased. I heard our gate open and about 5 young children came in to our compound to sit with our cook. Everybody only spoke Ngumbaye so I was not yet able to get an explanation. Mama Kiri called twice to ask if me if Béné had returned from school yet.

What I learned throughout the day was really saddening. As all of the private schools were settling back into classes- all around the country- older students from the public schools had planned a protest of their own. They had barged into the classrooms, shouting at the children to get out, and making all kinds of a ruckus. I don't know if they were all bark and no bite, or if any had used real force, but it had done the trick of petrifying kids. Some, like my sweet cousin Chance, had left all of their books behind and scrambled over the courtyard wall in panic. Tiny children who didn't know their way home were left searching in vain for their families.

Things were even worse than that. That day riots developed across the country. Somehow, the sibling of a fellow SALTer had his arm dislocated. 3 or 4 people in my city, students mostly, were hit by cars and killed. At my school, people managed to burn down the guard house, which was not a particularly difficult task, as I remember it being just basically a thatch roof.

So, classes were cancelled again, and we went back to waiting.

Then, yesterday, I heard that the government had begun paying its teachers. Today, most of the private schools went back to business. When I taught my pupils, they seemed excited to share what had happened, thrilled by the scariness of it rather than traumatized. I was just glad to be with them again. Maybe I'd feel differently if I was a student, but I've been reminded of what a privilege it is to be able to go to school. And even though I am saddened and perplexed by the way students and others have chosen to express their frustration, I'm also awed by their emotional reaction at having school taken away from them for this long. I am happy to hear that teachers are receiving their pay and that school can go back to usual.

To display to you all that things are not as scary as I may have painted them, I've included some photos that I took this very day of my happy coworkers and students. I was so pleased to spend time with their smiling selves today, and I dearly hope that very soon all of the schools in Tchad can enjoy their own reunions. *And an aside: I actually have no idea how many angry students there were this week. It could have been 12,000, but I also made that up.