Day 7 - Last day of term - Mohammed is busy

Friday 15th April

Today was the last day of term, so the students finished their final exam and made their perfunctory way back to the provinces. I remember the last day of term as being usually an exciting day when we would largely mess around and have fun when I was at school, but it doesn't seem to be the same culture here.

It was however a very busy time for my finance friend Mohammed who had to work very hard to make sure that he could salaries paid to all the staff. So I only got a couple of brief hours of work in with him, and that wasn't until the evening. It's most diligent of him to be willing to work on a Friday night after a full day's work. I like his work ethic, his propensity to laugh, and his integrity.

He has told me about his life story, and since he said that this is also on the Educaid website, I'm sure he won't mind me repeating it here.

When he was a small child his father couldn't afford to keep him so sent him to stay with a relative. From past experience of this in other parts of the developing world, I understand that this is a common approach to dealing with children when a family has lots of children but not much money. Typically it results in the "adopted" child being treated as something of a lackey.

This was in the 90s during the civil war, and when rebels arrived, you would be wise to be scared. The rebels and the soldiers had a habit of being brutal with people when they invaded a village. So when rebels arrived in Mohammed's village he ran and hid behind a log, and then walked to the nearest town, which I think was Kenema.

He spent some time hanging about on the streets offering to carry goods into vans for Le 100 a go (which is c. 2p at today's exchange rates). One day a driver got to like him (he was still a young child then) and took him to Freetown. When he got to Freetown he lost track of the driver and so ended up hanging about in the market during the day and then sleeping on the tables of the market at night. This went on for some time.

Then he joined a primary school for war-affected children. Most of the pupils were former child soldiers and violence was second nature to them. Guns were often smuggled into school. He learned to cope in this environment. I find this hard imagine now because he's such a gentle-natured soul, but he must have become tough - when the West Side Boys invaded Freetown lots of the pupils in the school rushed to join them, and they wanted Mohammed to join them because they thought he would be an asset. Mohammed wisely chose to hide from them and finished his primary schooling.

He then wrote lots of letters requesting sponsorship for his secondary schooling, but it looked like nothing would come of it so he got ready to become an apprentice to a mechanic. Then one day Miriam arrived. She's the country director for Educaid. Mohammed was a bit scared because he had never seen a white person before and thought she might be a spirit called a jinna which he had heard talk of in the villages. Luckily she was a human being who enabled him to get schooling.

He went on to join Fourah Bay College, which before the war was the most widely respected university in West Africa and had links to Durham University. He was also one of the 20% of the people in his year who did not fail his degree.

Today he still occasionally sees people he knew from before his time in Freetown. When they learn that he is graduate, they are impressed. Having a degree isn't as commonplace here as it is in the UK, so it's really meaningful. Mohammed speaks with humility, but I'm sure I can see pride behind his self-deprecating laughter.