ABSTRACT
It is early Monday morning in Kahalé village, about 45 kilometers from the capital city of Conakry. It’s raining again, and the water is flowing off the corrugated tin roof of the one-room schoolhouse in the center of the village. The rain makes it difficult for Monsieur Mamadou, the teacher, to get to school, as the rural taxi keeps getting stuck in the mud, forcing him and the six other passengers to help the driver get back on the road. Once at school, Monsieur Mamadou waits for his students to arrive. At 9 a.m., the room is only half full, which is probably not a bad thing—a full classroom would mean 65 children, and there are only enough benches to seat 50. Eight-year-old Assiatou sits in the back row. She has her pencil out and carefully copies into her notebook each word the teacher has written on the blackboard. While going to school is better than staying home, Assiatou has a sense that she is not making good use of her time. She can copy the text but doesn’t understand it. She can only read a few French words on the street signs and wall advertisements in her village. She feels bad about this, and wonders how it is that her classmates in the front rows seem to already know some French. She also wonders why Monsieur Mamadou only calls on those front-row pupils to work on the blackboard and not her. She’s heard that there is a school she can attend after primary school, but only the kids who sit in the front rows seem to ever enroll there. What is the point of studying and staying in school, she wonders. Perhaps she should reconsider and follow in the footsteps of her older sister, who dropped out of school and was recently married at age 14. Is that a better path to follow?
