After 36 hours in transit to Bamako and another 2 days to get back to our village, Jim and I were very ready to get back, rest, and catch up on what we’d missed. It didn’t take long to notice some differences in only a month. In fact, on our bike ride in, we noticed some temporary outdoor hangers set up adjacent to the elementary school.
Well, long story short, we now have a middle school (grades 7-9) in our village! About a week after we left, and due to the persistent lobbying of our school board president, Kongodugu was approved by the regional government to open a middle school. This is extremely meaningful to the people in Kongodugu. Until now, families have had to make a difficult choice: to keep their teens around as valuable farm hands to help with the harvest and chores or to send them 15km away to school with enough money to appease the host family who would give them food and a place to sleep for the next 9 months. Now, families can send these teens to school, but can also use their help in the fields 2-3 days/week.
When we first arrived in Kongodugu, it was clear that the people of the village expected us to build them a middle school. It was the reason they had requested a volunteer and Malians are very accustomed to foreigners coming in, not asking a lot of questions, spending lots of money, and building shiny new buildings. When we asked who would pay the teachers to fill those classrooms, they responded with an “if we build it they will come” philosophy. “Just build us a school and then there’s no way the regional government can refuse to pay teachers to teach here.” It was obvious that they hadn’t thought past the building yet. However, Peace Corps always stresses the importance of building sustainable communities, who can take care of their own schools, their own health care, their own water, etc. A building wouldn’t work without teachers or a supportive community. Therefore, in the end, we decided that if we went ahead and built a school building, we would be reinforcing negative stereotypes that Malians could get anything they wanted without working for it, as long as they complained enough to the “tubabs” (foreigners). Instead, we tried to encourage the school board to meet, encourage the teachers to actually go to class, and improve the adult literacy clubs. Our hope was to increase general enthusiasm for education in the village and motivate them to start working toward getting a middle school on their own. 
Now, over a year later, the village school board (with some help from Jim) has succeeded in convincing the regional government of the necessity of a middle school in our village. Within a week of the approval, the village got together and built 3 temporary outdoor hangers to be used as classrooms and found families to host and feed the new middle school teachers. One family even moved out of their home to give it to the new principal. Though they certainly have their faults and can be very unorganized and downright lazy when they don’t want to do something, we have gained a lot of respect for our villagers in the last few weeks. It has also been a great lesson for the villagers on the school board: they don’t need to sit and wait for tubabs to solve all of their problems. With hard work and perseverance, they can make huge improvements to the village on their own!
The other fun part of all of this is that Joye and Jim are filling in for the English teacher (who never showed up) a few hours every week. Joye’s just started teaching English in the 8th and 9th grade and is enjoying polishing up on her rusty French. Jim, who had previously vowed NEVER to teach middle school, is now teaching in the 7th grade and finding that 13 year olds aren’t ALL bad. So far, its fun to have a more structured activity built into our week, but we’ll let you know how it goes :)
Thanks for reading!
-Joye (& Jim)
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