Postcards from Côte d’Ivoire: Entry 8

Ou sont les pieds d’Alicia cette semaine?
(Where are Alicia’s feet this week?)

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

School-crossings are a new idea here- this one being used by a herd of mutton.

Greetings family, friends, and colleagues. My time remaining here in Côte d’Ivoire (CI) is getting short. I’m hoping to send you a few more postcards before returning to the U.S. at the end of the month, and I’ve left some of the more delicate - and maybe difficult - topics to explain about this country and culture. In upcoming blogs, I plan to cover women’s rights and race/ethnicity. Today I’d like to cover the topic of children, child labor, and early childhood education. This is a particularly delicate and political conversation because of the U.S. focus on eradicating child labor from the cocoa industry here. From my privileged, Western perspective, eradicating child labor seems like a no-brainer. Children should be in school and playing with their friends, not working on a plantation in the hot sun all day. However, like most things here, it is a much more complicated issue because of cultural norms around children, and the widespread poverty that is caused by inequality of income and opportunities in the country.

Boys at our Bonikro apartments doing gymnastics with an old tire and a pile of construction sand.

First, I think it’s important to explain the cultural norms around age and rank. In this culture, younger people are subordinate to older people, and that is widely accepted as normal. It is an extreme example of respecting your elders. For example, when we are out and about and Sekou needs assistance, he only needs to pull over to the side of the road and holler “Fiston!” (my son) to the nearest young man and the young man will immediately run to our car and do whatever task Sekou requires (driving directions, help pulling out into traffic, a hand loading something heavy, or in one case giving us the two mangoes he had just picked from a tree). Depending on the situation, Sekou typically tips the fiston for his trouble, but that is not an expectation. It’s hard for me to get used to, and I’ve inadvertently offended younger people by not accepting my rank. My nieces, for example, expect to do the household chores when they stay with us for visits. From my American perspective they are our house guests, and I am the host, so I should wait on them, but that is not the way here. Even though I still feel awkward about it, I have learned to sit on my hands and let the young women in my family take care of me because it’s how they show me love and respect.

Village boys fishing for lunch at Lac Labion.

One of Sekou and Alicia's nieces preparing a dinner of Cheb while staying with them.

This strong connection between age and rank extends to young children, too, who are at the bottom of the pecking order. Traditionally, as soon as children can walk, they take on household chores to help their parents - girls learning to do “women’s work” like carrying water, looking for firewood, and preparing food, and boys learning to hunt and fish and wield a machete. In the cities, things are changing and it’s more typical now for children to be in school, but in the villages some children are enrolled in school, but others spend the day helping their parents with the necessities of life. According to World Bank data in 2019 100% of children were enrolled in primary education in CI, but I suspect the official number of eligible children is grossly underestimated due to a lack of census data. That statistic does not represent what I see on my travels around the country. Many children - especially those of immigrant families from other, poorer neighboring countries - are not going to school every day, even in our own family.

For example, in Jacqueville at our Lac Labion property, there is a local villager growing a crop of cassava on our neighbor’s vacant lot. He and many of the other village farmers enjoy our lovely cover of trees and shade on their breaks, so our property is somewhat of a village gathering place. The cassava farmer’s three sons are often with him, despite the fact that there is a village public school there and the playground is full of children when we drive by. Last week I watched in amazement as the three boys made homemade fishing lines, caught themselves three fish that they cooked over a fire and fed themselves lunch. Then, in the afternoon when our brick-makers needed more water for bricks, the boys were put to work with their father carrying water from the lake. Of course, Sekou paid them all for their labor, reinforcing an important life lesson from their father’s perspective - hard work is rewarded with money. As I sat on the lake charmed by watching these happy, laughing, boys “play,” I realized I was witnessing - and now was complicit in - child labor. These boys live in a fishing village in huts made of palm fronds on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea, so perhaps knowing how to fish and farm cassava and do day labor is more important than reading, writing, and arithmetic? Who am I - an outsider - to tell this father that he is neglecting his sons by not sending them to school every day? He would probably tell me he would be neglecting them by not teaching them the basics of survival here. What good will reading and writing do them in this village, and why should they leave this idyllic life to work in an office all day in the dirty, noisy, crime-ridden city of Abidjan?

Village boys and their father helping to haul water for bricks at Lac Labion.

Another aspect of childhood that is different is what children play with here. Adults don’t typically buy toys for children - they often simply don’t have the money for such luxuries, and they aren’t seen as important. Children play with found objects like old tires and sticks and whatever they find in the street. Is that better than all of the battery-operated plastic toys we buy for our children in the U.S.? Probably not for creativity and ingenuity. I’ve seen toddlers make the most creative toys out of garbage here. But what are they missing by not having books and puzzles and manipulatable toys like Lego?

Sekou with niece Yadio and her 1-year-old Hassan. Alicia and Sekou took them to the mall in Marcory to purchase Hassan’s first book, puzzle, and toy.

These questions were still nagging at me yesterday when Sekou and I had an opportunity to visit a new childcare center that was opened by our friends Didier and Grace Gbai in a brand-new housing development in the city of Grand Bassam. The French influence on society here is apparent in the educational system, and in France and CI early childhood education is a basic right - funded by the government just like primary and secondary education. In CI, the government provides an approved curriculum to childcare centers, and after the program has been certified by the Ministry of Education, the government subsidizes the teachers’ salaries in privately-owned preschools like the one the Gbai’s run. The L’ecole Christ Emmanuel opened in September last year. They currently have 28 preschoolers and seven kindergarten-aged students and hope to serve 70 two- to five-year old’s when the program is fully enrolled. They also have one special-needs child that attends the program one or two days a week.

Alicia and Sekou visiting a new preschool run by friends in the city of Grand Bassam.

Grace is the onsite director, and she employs three teachers, all of whom have teaching certificates from the university. One teacher is retired after 30 years in the public educational system. She works part-time at the center as her retirement job. They are still waiting for the Ministry of Education to do the certification inspection, and then they expect to receive teacher salary subsidies, which is good because tuition for an eight-month program that meets four days a week is 80,000 CFA, today equivalent to about $160. I clarified several times that $160 is the annual tuition, not monthly tuition, because I was so shocked by how little preschool costs compared to the U.S. However, the program would not be practical for working families needing daycare - children go home for lunch at 11:30 AM and return at 2:30 PM for the afternoon session. Also, Wednesdays they are closed. Even so, there is a HUGE demand for preschool programs and new centers are opening every day. Sekou is considering building and starting a center, too, on one of our vacant lots.

Preschoolers finishing circle time and washing their hands before snack time at L'ecole Christ Emmanuel.

Like all other aspects of life, it’s hard to compare but very easy to contrast the experience of children here with U.S. children. Are children happier, safer, better adjusted to their society in the U.S. than in Côte d’Ivoire? Do they grow to be more productive adults? I can’t answer these questions based on my own observations. Sekou remembers his childhood fondly full of love from his parents, despite only receiving a toy as a gift once - a model train from his Dad’s employer who was European. I’ve seen plenty of happy children - even the boys who carried water for us at Lac Labion - and most of the adults I have met are well-adjusted and productive members of society.

Want to learn more about early childhood education and the lives of children in CI? Join us on our next Travel with Purpose tour! - Alicia

Be on the lookout for our Travel with Purpose trailer on Monday, with highlights from our past trips!

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