How We Learn

How do we learn?

That is the question that has been on my mind of late. We are trying to educate over 1,000 children in Sierra Leone and we are now at the point where we are really seeing just how well we have been doing – kids are sitting secondary school leaver exams. We are learning lessons all the time and I am determined for us to be a group of people who take our knocks and celebrate our successes but above all else learn from every experience. 

Learn. Develop. Improve. And learn some more.

Recently our Education Specialist and I, along with various other members of staff, have been seeking to learn from the experiences of others and it has been a thoroughly thought provoking exercise. One thing has been clear – everyone we talk to struggles with many of the same things that we do. They share many of the same frustrations and, while everyone is approaching things in their own ways, they have yet to find any silver bullets either. Another thing is clear – there are some exceptional people working in the area of education in Sierra Leone, both national and international people of knowledge, experience and above all else, devotion. Conversations with these people are edged with a sense of potential that sends the slight hint of a tingle up my spine. The Irish Catholic Sister who has been here for more years than I have been alive and shares from those experiences with generosity, honesty and humour. The Sierra Leonean teacher trainer who responds to questions by sitting forward and pointing at you with a smile and a widening of his eyes as if this was exactly the thing he was hoping you would ask. The American non-profit founder with the quirky, slightly bohemian sensibility and the ability to see genuine successes and progress where others might be too near-sighted to find anything other than disappointment. Our own Education Specialist whose slender frame and patient, polite demeanour seem to stand in contrast to the tenacious love and ferocious determination that underpin the steadfast endurance of her service to our children.

Another thread woven in to each of our conversations has been that there are many things which, be they systemic, cultural or otherwise, would seek to impede us and cause us to despair. How then have these people with greater experience than I managed to keep going? When I first met our Irish Sister, she shared the story of a priest who had served here for a lifetime - “some really great work” was her summary. On his deathbed he had expressed his disappointment that, though he was unsure of what they were, he felt that mistakes must have been made because he did not see that things had gotten any better. When asked how she managed to stay clear of the emotions of the jaded, she smiled. Someone else in the room suggested, “The Spirit of the Most High God” and she smiled again. “I hope that that is part of it, yes”, she commented. But she then continued with a particularly honest earthiness I have seen in a number of Catholic leaders saying, “Although when I am in a bad mood that can sometimes go out the window!” She collected her thoughts for a second before turning to me and answering, “It’s the children.”

And so I come back to the original question and the question that automatically follows. How do we learn? And, that being the case, how can we help the children? Our schools are focusing on improving the way we teach English and I have been involved in extra lessons for our older students we are calling “English Club”. I have been learning a great deal from our Education Specialist and another Education Consultant currently serving with us as well as these many other conversations and experiences with students about the structures of a language I always just “knew” and never had to really “learn”. And how do you succeed in building critical thinking skills in others? Anyone who has seen a Sierra Leonean jerry-rigg a vehicle or a generator with a piece of a t-shirt and the hammering of a rock knows that problem solving skills are present but to truly think critically, reflectively, our students need a lot of development. It’s fascinating thinking about how to impart such knowledge and skills on to others, a task which comes with a burden of responsibility that weighs heavily. But we are learning a lot about how to proceed. 

Learning. Developing. Improving. And then learning some more. 

Sometimes in April

I once wrote a now lost essay in which I tried my best to lay out certain aspects of the Rwandan Genocide and the Sierra Leonean Rebel War side by side in the compare and contrast style enjoyed by academia. A ridiculous challenge of an assignment for sure but my reward would be an incredibly moving research experience. Maybe, given where I have started to spend so much of my time, the impact of that lingers still. And amongst the horror that seemed to intensify with the turn of each page, I learned the names of people who I would now list amongst my “heroes”.

Have you ever heard of Philippe Gaillard? Born in Switzerland in the 50s this literature graduate was head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Rwanda during the genocide. He wouldn’t expect you to recognise his name. Not exactly a huge fan of the spotlight which would inevitably shine his way for a time in 1994, he once commented, “I wish I were never visible again.” His time in Rwanda however would be the first time the ICRC would be active in the midst of a genocide and an estimated 65,000 lives were saved.

How was such a thing done? The ICRC stayed when so many others left and ran a makeshift hospital for the wounded or the "not finished off" as Gaillaird prefers to call them. Only a few of their expatriate staff remained but that was enough to protect the 120 national staff members who were then able to help so many of their fellow Rwandans. As Gaillaird says, “We went, entered and stood our ground, instead of clearing out. We spread out, instead of locking ourselves in. We conversed and, in the hell that was Rwanda, we spoke to all the devils.” The power of dialogue is something Gaillard believes in implicitly, explaining matter-of-factly that, “the best way to save people is to talk with the people who want to kill them.” I cannot imagine the intensity of these conversations, so often at road blocks manned by Interahamwe militiamen like those who had at one point emptied a Red Cross Ambulance and “finished off” all those inside. Gaillard describes a heated exchange he had with one of the genocide’s architects, Colonel Bagosora like this:

I told him, "Colonel, do something to stop the killing. This is absurd. This is suicide." And his answer was -- there are words you never forget -- his answer was, "Listen, sir, if I want tomorrow I can recruit 50,000 more Interahamwe." I took him by the shirt-- I'm 58 kilograms and he must be 115-- I took him by the throat, looked in his eyes and told him, "You will lose the war.”

What Gaillaird shares when he considers the nature of the ICRC’s impact is powerful. Pondering the numbers, he once commented, “Ten thousand people is nothing in a conflict that saw almost a million die in under three months, it is just a millimetre of humanity in kilometres of horror.” But what precious space. Somewhere else he said that, “There is not one millimetre of humanity in a genocide.” And so it was the job of the ICRC to create a millimetre of beauty. As Gaillard himself puts it, “Yes, this is our job, to find beauty, create beauty in the very core of horror”. He invokes Keats, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever." He is quick to re-emphasize the vastness of the horror, the utter barbarism that surrounded everything but there was something crucial about being able to find that tiny space of the still human.

Gaillard tried to create a human space for his staff during the days of killing by reading them poetry – Rimbaud’s “A Season in Hell” - at dinner every evening. He said, “You have to find a way to pray.” Talking about the negation of humanity by genocidal horror he comments that, “Whenever you can reduce this negation it is a miracle. And the memory never forgets miracles.” It is these memories now that Gaillard struggles to cope with. The millimetre of beauty which the ICRC and others were able to create. He says now that he will never return to Rwanda. “Not at all because this would remind me of awful things”, he explains. “I don't want to meet again with people we have saved, because it's too strong. It's unbearable. It's too beautiful.”