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Pygmies Wamba |
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Sisi Wambuti tuko!!! |
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Education |
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It is a pity that children of Pygmies, abandoned to themselves, fail to persevere in Public schools, during a whole year! Moreover, their lifestyle (Lack of clothes, their mobility related to their cultural dances) places them in a state of inferiority. They easily undergo the contempt of the other Bantus pupils that waters down their success.
Moreover, the mobility of the Pygmies for cultural dances, especially in the dry season and the period of fetching honey from the forest empty the village out! Which methodology should we use? Would it be possible to call upon a « special attention » of some Governmental institutions able to reach out the situation of pygmies?
Setting a PROGRAM and TERMS in schools "adapted" to their way of life, would be the ideal, but how to run successfully these " Particular Schools " for Pygmies in a country with a poor educational system, a system which has not yet assured a proper Education of children all over the country? The Pygmies’ people run the risk of being rejected.
A policy of integration without loosing cultural values remains a challenge in all the educational system in D.R.Congo. The many difficulties that we face, have led us to search for some attempts and solutions:
In Cameroon exists a METHOD called O.R.A. (Observe- Reflect and Act), which introduces gradually the children pygmies into Public Schools. Its a modern method: its goal is to help the Pygmy’s pupil to be more active, taking things from his culture and of his environment. During ORA 1, the pupil uses images taken from his daily life and he is asked to see (observe); He is called to use his mother tongue (as mean of communication), he will then end with the use of French (The teacher follows the TEXTBOOK (the Manual) from the beginning of ORA 1.
The second Year is richer than the first one: following a sentence-key, as a pattern, with a drawing, the pupil has to find out a « letter », and has to search for it in other words and drawings. He is introduced to use it… Then, he will be taught how to write the letter correctly and to jot it down in his exercise book. The lessons are restricted to Reading-Writing-and Calculation. (Manuals for the Teacher and Textbook for the pupil).
In ORA 2, we complete the program of the first “official year. In ORA3 (The third year for Pygmies), we follow the National Program of the Second year, with some pedagogical particularities. In a nutshell, for the Pygmies’ children during three years, we complete what the Public schools do in two years. In the third year, the Pygmies pupils continue their studies like any other Primary Public School. The educational system that the Pygmies children follow are well prepared in advance and seems to be better than other primary schools in Congo.
Note: From ORA 1, the children pygmies are all together with the Bantu children. It creates a climate of fraternity and respect among the children from the childhood, although in our schools, to facilitate things, the pygmies are more that the Bantus.
The crisis within the educational system in D.R.Congo motivated us to take the Pygmies’ Children and Bantus’ in hand. In all our schools, scattered along the deep forest, where all the inhabitants never profited from school Education, you can easily notice that the Pygmies Educational Program has help the Bantus Children who, surely, would not have got the chance to study. Thanks for the Pygmies because they have given to the children, living in our area of coverage, access to a serious educational program which they do no have elsewhere.
Indeed, this year 2004/05, we have with our care, the responsibility for good 285 classes primary (ORA and following), distributed in 21 School Directions, with a total of more than 5.000 pupils Pygmies (3.000 boys and 2.000 girls approximately) together to 2.600 pupils Bantus... This is a large estimate, which goes beyond our limits: to pay salaries of approximately 300 teachers and in more with the « premium » of the ORGANIZERS of the Pygmies’ camps, (who are very indispensable in the implementation of the activities of PROJECT PYGMEES WAMBA) |
