 Martin Cradick has just returned from Gbiné with more recordings. He is planning to put together some more songs by Orchestre Baka Giné as a follow-up to Gati Bongo
Andi Main is still at Gbiné finishing the "teachers' house" with his team of Baka builders and helping them with their own village houses.
The "teachers' house" is part of a project that is partly funded by a donation from The Adventurists that was raised at the Under the Volcano Festival that we organised in January 2010. Here is a brief summary of the project:
After having spoken to many people, including local teachers, we have come to the conclusion that the best way to help education is to provide a means to help Baka children get through the end of year exams and so as to be able to progress through the school system.
Problems seen:
- The school terms in Cameroon are based on the French system which in turn are based on the Northern European agriculture system. The long summer holiday coincides with the harvest time when historically children were needed to help their parents bring in the summer crops. The term times however do not coincide when the Baka children are likely to be in the village.
- Because the Baka children go with their parents into the forest they miss key stages in the curriculum. They also often miss the end of year exam as they are off helping their parents harvest wild mangos. They therefore tend to have to endlessly repeat the same school year and lose heart in education.
- When the Baka are in the village there is very little food to be hunted and gathered, so they are much more reliant on getting jobs to pay for food, and are more prone to be tempted by hard alcohol.
Solutions:
- We have received funding to build a house for visiting teachers/helpers (practically finished by now). We aim to monitor the attendance of those children wishing to go to the school in Banana (with the help of the local teachers) and to note which subjects they miss.
- At the end of the school year (in July and August when many families tend to be in the village, not the forest) we would employ a teacher to tutor the children in the subjects they have missed and to teach them specificly to get through their end of year exams.
Benefits:
We hope that the results of this will be as follows:
- It won't be seen as a problem for the Baka children to miss some of their schooling so that they can freely accompany their parents into the forest and so be taught forest skills (this is vital for them to continue to be able to have access to the forest)
- They can continue to be educated alongside other members of the local community.
- Those who want to will have the opportunity to continue into secondary education. At present this is effectively denied to them unless they give up their forest existence and decide to live full time in a mission.
- The teachers house will be available for other teachers/helpers to come to work for short periods for other projects, ie teaching permaculture farming methods, adult education etc or whatever the community at Gbiné feel will be worthwhile.
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