On Strike

The school I am teaching at now is a Senegalese public school. There are a couple thousand students, and about 60 in each class. My first week went smoothly enough, I sat in on some classes of the teachers I would be working with, and at the end of the week I taught for some of the classes. My second week was a little more eventful. There was a teacher’s strike at the beginning of the week because some of the teachers weren’t getting paid. The management didn’t really offer much of an explanation, but I didn’t teach at the beginning of the week. I’m not getting paid anyway because I am a volunteer, but I felt like if I taught a class that would have been taught by a teacher who was striking, that would mean I was siding with management and I didn’t want to be a scab. Then on Thursday the strike was over and teaching resumed. I was teaching the first class and about halfway through a group of 20 or more students between 16-18 years old came in and started yelling something to the class in Wolof. Then all the students in the class started yelling and everyone got up and left the class. The lady I teach with (Mrs. Fall) was just shaking her head and I asked what was going on and she said it was a student’s strike. Apparently the students were expected to take some standardized tests, but the school failed to provide teachers for some of the subjects they would be tested on, specifically, French and math. I guess it’s a reasonable enough reason to strike as a student. So that ended the week for me. Mrs. Fall assures me that there are periods of time where no one is striking and classes can actually be taught, but in public schools, it appears the administration isn’t very well organized, and strikes like these are common. I am currently organizing the other volunteers for a volunteer strike to protest the frequency of strikes in the schools here.

I have been using the long weekend to send out applications to graduate schools which is a pretty grueling process, but I am going to need to do something with my life when I eventually return to the states. The internet situation here is pretty spotty. The cafes seem to be working about half the time, and there are two hotel restaurants that have wireless that you can use if you buy something. One of them usually has a stable connection, so when it does, I usually set up camp there for most of the day doing grad school research. My family finds it strange that I need the internet so much because so few Senegalese people use the internet. I tell them that if you have a job in the states you need to be able to check the internet every day, and they are flabbergasted. I've also been passing the time by playing soccer with some of the kiddies in the house.

There is also a lot more animal street traffic due to the upcoming holiday Tabaski which will be the day when thousands of sheep and goats are killed and there will be a large feast. Merchants from all around are coming in to Saint-Louis to sell their livestock to meet the high demand.