Welcome To Dakar!

Hello and Greetings from Dakar, Senegal in West Africa. This blog will help you see some of the people and places associated with the school where I (Mr. Elias Khalil) am teaching this year. I am assigned to teach beginning English to 38 6th graders and third year English to two classes of 8th graders with around 45 students in each. The school, evidently, is a middle school which covers the grades 6-9. Here middle schools are called "college" while high schools are "lycees". The name of the school is CEM El Hadji Malick Sy and has about 325 students. It is a public school, however, with little to no government funding. The school consists of two buildings, an administrative building with a faculty room, a bathroom, the main office, and two other offices for the principal and assistant principal. However, the building is in such disrepair with no hope for help from the government, that the administrators moved the office into the other building which houses the classrooms. That building has 10 rooms divided evenly between two floors. Two rooms--the room designated to be the library, and one of the 6th grade classrooms--are being occupied by the faculty and administrators. Another room is the computer lab, with about 15 outdated computers with an internet connection that has worked at most one week in total this whole school year. That leaves 7 classrooms for the 4 grades; 2 for each grade except for 6th grade which only has one this year (actually works out well as that grade's enrollment is small). The building is more than 40 years old and is literally crumbling. The floors are bumpy, pothole-ridden cement slabs. The walls and ceilings have peeling, faded, drab paint. Most of the classroom doors are hollow wood doors that have holes in them and broken locks. The chalk boards are made of cement that is painted black and has cracks in many places. There are only two flourescent bulbs in each classroom. There are metal shutters that are rusting out. There are no bulletin boards or corkstrips from which to hang maps or posters, etc. Most of the student desks, designed for two students, are in some state of disrepair: the wooden table top is cracked or hanging on by one screw, the backs or seats also made of wood may be cracked or have missing chunks. The tough part is that the school has no funding, so there is no repairperson, no maintenance person, no janitor, no hall monitors or security for the school property; so it's very difficult to maintain the building. Students don't receive subject books; they have them only if their families can afford to buy them from stores or street merchants. No room, including the library, has a bookshelf or a book or dictionary for that matter. The students have 4 toilets in a detached building that often has plumbing problem and no sinks or soap, just a faucet/hydrant to rinse off after taking care of their business. Dakar, Senegal is located in the Sahel which is that part of Africa where the desert ends and soil as we know it begins. Because of its geography, most of the ground is sand with rocks thus creating immense piles of dust and sand blowing through the school shutters into the classrooms. Of course there is no cafeteria, gym, auditorium.

Despite this physical reality, the students come to school daily in the hopes of learning. Some are serious, intelligent, industrious; others are lazy...sound familiar?!

The purpose of this blog is not to dwell on the present, but to help shape the future. In the hope of change and cultivating hope among the students, I and other teachers have embarked on a project to engage the students in the repair and pride of their school. I am posting pictures here so you can track the past, and have a feel for the present work at hand. I have called upon the students and staff at North Farmington High School in Farmington Hills, Michigan to lend whatever support that they can to help us here in Senegal with this endeavor. Fortunately, I am proud and humbled to say that many have promptly heeded the call, and aid is on its way. If you, your company, your family, friends, faith community, or sports team can help in any way, please don't hesitate to contact me.

WHAT WE WOULD LIKE

We are asking for student materials: pens, pencils, notebooks, student world atlases, classroom maps of the world and the USA, chalk, erasers, paperclips, post-it notes, staplers, staples, index/blank flash cards. Anything that could be of use in the classroom that could be sent in quantities of 45-50 units so a whole class could be provided with that item. Many American sports are unknown here: a couple baseball bats and balls and 10 mitts; a couple footballs, a couple hockey pucks, badminton rackets and birdees, volleyballs, soccerballs, jerseys, caps, would be great.

For the building, money to buy paint, putty, plaster, corkboards, classroom closets/bookcases, fix student desks etc. Paint supplies and labor are about $100 a room, corkstrips/maprails are about $30 each, closets/bookcases are about $100 each (made of wood by a local carpenter). Fixing desks is about $30 a desk, leveling out the cement floor is about $100 per room, replacing the locks on the doors is about $20 a door, installing curtains over the metal shutters to try to keep the sand/dust out is about $60 a room or installing glass windows over the shutters is about $200 a room (2 windows).

HOW TO SEND AID

As my year here as a Fulbright teacher is coordinated through the U.S. State Department, packages and mail can be sent to me via the Diplomatic Pouch arriving at the U.S. Embassy in Dakar, Senegal. Any in-kind donation can be sent in boxes not to exceed 32 inches in length. Packages/boxes should be labeled with the words "Educational Materials". Packages and letters/small envelopes can be sent to the following address: Elias Khalil--Fulbright Teacher // E 2130 Dakar Place // Dulles, VA 20189-2130. If checks are sent, they should be payable to: Elias Khalil with "CEM Malick Sy" on the memo line. There is no official receipt or tax document that I can provide you for tax purposes; but I would be happy to petition the school here to write you out a receipt for your records. Finally, I depart Senegal by July 1, 2009, so any aid/packages should be sent well before that date with an expected delivery of two weeks after postmark.