My book 'How to teach English' is still on sale, but difficult to find in an ordinary bookshop it seems.

For Teacher’s friend, there is a totally new version coming out. Please contact me for it.

RE: What I wrote once ...

In south Sudan, as elsewhere in Africa, the Church is often seen as
'civil society, indeed at times to represent it. In Afghanistan, as in
Sri Lanka it seems, there is much rhetoric about the 're'(?) emergence
of civil society as a way of securing peace. Yet here in most areas of
the country this means older men whose views are seen to represent
others. Some support the Taliban and very few have any kind of
commitment to the principles of democracy that empowering them is
argued to do.

NGOs in Afghanistan are calling for more support, more funding to civil
society. Yet there is almost no real understanding of what impact this
has. The National solidarity programme, international funding through
the Govt to NGOs, claims to empower civil society and women (two
different things) yet there is no baseline by which to judge any
advance.

Empowerment (whatever that means) seems to neglect the issue of who is
being empowered and what impact that has on other dynamics, especially
at a local level. It also seems to assume that civil society is
homogonous where in reality it is usually polarised ethnically, in
class terms, occasionally (but increasingly rarely) in terms of
ideology which is not necessarily self interest.

I once wrote (but can't find) a piece on meaningless words used by
humanitarian agencies. Did I include Civil society? Probably.

Graham Wood

Humanitarian Consultant
Now in Afghanistan

==

In pre-Tsunami Sri Lanka civil society strengthening became a key
criteria for selection of projects by donors, this based on the
theories that a
peace dividend and increased social cohesion (another famous word here)
would
stabilize the peace process. This was despite the fact that the largest
and
most mobilized civil society groups, including Buddhist movements, were
continuously
demonstrating for a return to conflict.

One could still argue however that they were civil.

Vance Culbert

Seen on Reliefweb, immediately following an advertisement for a job in people trafficking:

Procurement Specialist, South Africa

International Centre for Migration Policy Development

I wonder which meaning of procurement they actually mean …

What I wrote once ...

I am civil society

‘Civil society’ as a phrase has an honourable ancestry in politics. One phase of the evolution of countries post-independence and of the evolution-in-parallel of NGOS and UN bodies has been the gradual emergence of the idea of ‘Civil Society’ as opposed to uncivil society? To military society? To ecclesiastical society? …. Well, that is another question.

This is just to celebrate the enterprising man who not only declared in a coordination meeting that he represented ALL of civil society, but that his NGO was called Civil Society.  Like the Church of God which appears in its name to have monopolised all religious possibilities at least for monotheists, Mr Civil Society presented himself as the unique interlocutor. His only reward though, was to be ignored by everyone.

Barry Sesnan

barrysbook.blogspot.com  ..     ebrealitycheck.blogspot.com

FW:

Voluntarism

Spurred by a UNHCR remark some years ago that: Payment can destroy the sense of responsibility that refugees feel for their welfare. I wrote the following

I actually have a fairly jaded attitude to voluntarism in Africa just now, not about work-camps, joint seminars etc. but trying to get labour for free as we often do in refugee camps. It is complex and coloured by various experiences, including in some work I am doing in Congo just now, where the international NGO pays almost nothing for teachers getting training in the afternoons on the grounds that ‘that is the government’s job’. Since the government doesn’t even get round to paying them a salary, displacing themselves to be trained (with no guarantee of promotion at the end of it – also the government’s job) involves the teachers in significant costs (not able to farm, fish etc on those days).

Why, firstly, asking mostly poor Africans to volunteer when they have no job, no ‘cushion’, no alternative is dubious I feel. In refugee camps teachers and young people are asked to volunteer to get the schools going, and that is fine …. For a year. Then they also have the right to earn some money for their work. Secondly, there is a world of difference between the first world volunteer and the third world volunteer. This is particularly relevant when you think of Red Cross’s fundamental belief in the value of volunteering.

In another aspect of the same thing, when I was doing HIV/AIDS prevention work in Congo in UNICEF one of our partner NGOs (In this case the partnership was like that I have with my small dog who hangs around the table wagging his tale waiting for me to throw him something) rightly identified the bicycle taxi boys as good carriers of the prevention message to youth (like hairdressers and rap singers, for example) and told them to come for five afternoons’ training.

They refused on the grounds that

a) they were being given nothing to compensate for the income they would lose and

b) the NGO was full of fat people who were obviously getting ‘something’ from UNICEF which they were not passing on.

They were right of course.

(I told them to make themselves into a suitable partner we could deal with directly! Thus indirectly encouraging that proliferation of NGOs that is so difficult to handle).

Stayees and the people who have sense

And then, the realisation that the people who suffered most after a refugee crisis lasting many years were actually those who stayed at home (now after years granted their own bit of jargon: ‘stayees’). In Juba in 2005 the Juba people saw themselves as heroes for having lived through 20 years of hell (and it was truly grim) and the SPLM who believe they should be grateful for being liberated (and incidentally should give up their posts and jobs to the incoming SPLMs who ‘enjoyed’ -- according to Juba people -- in exile). The people coming back from 15 years in refugee camps in Uganda were taller, healthier and much better educated than those who had stayed at home. Something which was the case in eastern Congo also where refugees came back who had had no interruption to their education when they were in exile, to live among a mentally, and sometimes physically, stunted (better word xx) population whose schools had all been closed for years.

In another place, aid workers could be heard actually to question whether a water supply or an electricity supply was a good thing. Questions no one would dream of asking in Ghana or Kenya, or in Europe.

And then what about the time when the wars in Congo were dying down and the UN system declared that it was now time for the population to start going back home to Bunia. A whole integrated programme was mounted along the route from North Kivu, way stations provided with water and so on. But no one went. Why? Well once again, no one actually asked the people. Their children were all in school. The school year had three months to run and there were important exams to take. No one was going to move until they were over.

During all this, I wondered how we forgot, occasionally, our common sense. One of the kindest people I know who over the years, by his practical approaches has made life easier for so many people in conflict and post-conflict areas, seriously suggested, after the massacres in Bunia that one way to guarantee a better future would be to make sure that we only aided schools where all the children of the warring tribal groups attended together. This was just months after massacres, when the communal graves were everywhere What parent would take (or send) her child across the increasingly serious line between the factions to make an ideological point?

Numbers ending in a lot of zeroes.

In Southern Sudan there were six million people in the census in the early eighties (including me). Most people believe that by the mid-nineties only 2 million remained in the south, 2 million had fled and 2 million died who shouldn’t have. This number ‘feels’ right, sounds convenient and is very easy to keep alive in documentation. I have used it myself.

Yet, I have always said: Never believe any figure ending in three zeroes, especially if it comes from a UN body or an NGO. It is usually plucked out of the sky.

So what about these figures ending in six zeroes? Well, certainly, it is impossible to verify them. I have a close knowledge of certain parts of the Southern Sudanese population, originating in Equatoria. I taught the parents and now know the children and I have to agree that one third of them have certainly been in exile (probably more), another third are in a strange limbo, sometimes in, sometimes out (it is a border area) but I could not justify a claim that one third of them died. That would mean that of the six hundred students we had in our first year in Juba Day Secondary school, 200 had died. Even allowing for the normal death rate, and for specific cases I know about, such as one executed for some infraction when he became an SPLA officer, and the baby of one of my ex-clerks who died from his father’s drunken neglect, and a group of wild life officers executed by the Arabs in 1992 for suspected sympathy with the SPLA incursion into Juba (which left lasting resentment, as the SPLA didn’t follow through, so many people who had revealed their sympathies were punished by the Arabs when the SPLA withdrew). I cannot say that I know that one third died.

In Congo, through knowledge of people I work with, the ‘extra deaths’ theory would seem to be more plausible. The mother of one of my trainers was the only one of nine Hema women captured by the Lendus one day who was not hacked to death. There are huge areas where there has been no modern medical care for years, even preceding the war. Still, three million ….

Often when we find that an NGO is reporting devastation in ‘its’ area, if we examine a little deeper we find that a good part of the population didn’t die, they just fled. Goma went from 50,000 people to 500,000 people in ten years. Much of the increase was of people flowing in from conflict-ridden rural areas. Schools closing in rural areas were matched by heavily overcrowded schools in the town And this urbanisation will 'stick'; not everyone will go back, ever, whatever we in agencies think should happen.

I am civil society

‘Civil society’ as a phrase has an honourable ancestry in politics. One phase of the evolution of countries post-independence and of the evolution-in-parallel of NGOS and UN bodies has been the gradual emergence of the idea of ‘Civil Society’ ... as opposed to uncivil society? To military society? To ecclesiastical society? …. Well, that is another question.

This is just to celebrate the enterprising man who not only declared in a coordination meeting in Goma that he represented ALL of civil society, but that his NGO was called Civil Society. Like the Church of God which appears in its name to have monopolised all religious possibilities at least for monotheists, Mr Civil Society presented himself as the unique interlocutor. His only reward though, was to be ignored by everyone.

Coordination

Coordination is rarely in the interest of the beneficiaries, and not always in the interest of agencies. Discuss.

When there were four refugee camps around the town of Yei in Southern Sudan, managed by four different NGOs there was an interesting ‘market’ for the refugees. It was not long before opinions were clear, while education might be better in camp A, health care was definitely better in camp C. Logically, this should have led to better services all round, but lax monitoring led instead to a different outcome: each refugee family distributed its members over all four camps.

And they got 4 food distributions.

Coordination actually takes away the ‘free market’ element from the beneficiaries and reduces their freedom to choose. It can be seen as a ‘disempowering’ [jargon] act as it takes away some of their possible choices and takes away from the agency the need to provide quality service, because there is no competition. We would not tolerate this in business, allowing people to set themselves up as a sole provider, and with limited provision at that.

While it is clear that beneficiaries do not always benefit from coordination, the agencies are also ambivalent about it. They subscribe to the principle, attend the meetings, but because they are also competing for funding they do not always subscribe to the practice, and may indeed sabotage it. Examples can be cited from any level from grass-roots NGOs (‘these are my people; no one understands them like I do’) to very big agencies (‘We accept coordination of course, but only to the extent it helps us’ – actual quote from a Unicef Representative).

just to show how keen we are on coordination consider this: In Goma in the early 2000s the four agencies in one compound always went to coordination meetings in four cars.

And how many times has a UN house actually contained ALL the UN bodies in a given town?

NGos are nto exempt - often coordination seems to exist only to cover up the fact that the NGOs don't have enough money to do all they want.

Not joined up

UNICEF, like many other international agencies does procurement for all its activities in Copenhagen or Dubai, because it is cheaper. No account is taken of the huge number of small enterprises everywhere in Africa which folded – or never grew -- because of this decision, and the massive unemployment which followed. UNICEF says it is because it is a humanitarian agency, not really a development body. Yet alongside, UNDP and others are busily saying that they are developing.

After the volcano I had a hard time getting permission to have school desks made locally, even though there was no shortage of wodd, carpenters, or saw mills.

However, we should also be a little honest also - sometimes, local procurement is not doing a lot for the locals, because we procure from big Lebanese or Indian compaies, which are actually exploiting their workers (but do provide a cheaper price).

Room for a bit of ethical thinking here, I think. .

A bright idea in the 1980s in S Sudan

An NGO, I think it was Oxfam (usually known as Oxfarm, which seemed more logical on agriculture projects), had set up a good project among the Acholis of Sudan building on the system, widespread in the region, of ‘brigade’ farming. In this system a group of young farmers worked together to cultivate their land. The practical number was around 20 and they would all congregate on one persons land, weed it, or hoe it all day and then in the evening the person they worked for provided the entertainment and food. The next morning, crack of dawn, or even before, they were at the next plot, and so on. This way with their tremendous energy, copious flows of grain-beer (actually fairly nutritious, another problem when the anti-alcohol laws came in) they covered large areas.

Oxfam/Oxfarm’s innovation was to provide oxen, not actually traditional, but which greatly magnified the area covered. There was one snag though. They kept on getting slaughtered by the elders for their next marriage to a young girl. The young men had no say in this (and truth to tell might well have done the same if they were older). So there was simple clash of meaning, as anthropologists might say.

For young Odongo the ox was his tractor; for his uncle Okello it was exactly what was needed to have a good traditional ceremony, and was already in the family so it was free.

Along comes Oxfam’s young agricultural worker who has pondered the situation. He meets the elders and asks them if they have noticed that he injects the oxen every so often, and that the oxen are not actually very productive on the reproductive front. So?, said the elders. Well, said the extension worker, anyone who eats the beef of these animals will probably suffer the same loss of powers.

Problem solved; no animals were slaughtered again!

The following article from a refugee magazine is notable for the fact that it can't actually prove anything. In fact it says clearly that it doesn't know the real facts but still makes strong assertions.

Please note the highlights which all deal with speculation or what 'must be true'.

This style is far too common! It seems that rape is exempt from normal rigour in proof. Yet I know the researcher who did the 2002 work and she was very very careful in what she wrote, with the result that her report was very powerful and chilling.

It reminds me of having to do an 'Orphans of AIDS project ' in Kinshasa. Even though our surveys showed that this population was NOT distinguished as a separate group by the extended families who just saw them simply as orphans, the donor insisted we had to pick out some children to fit their category. It led to quite invidious situations.

Similarly in this article we are asked to be indignant (and we would be right to be indignant) about something for the extent of which actually there is virtually no direct statistical evidence.

I know the area; I know it to be true - rape is rampant - but are we well-served by such vagueness? It would not be tolerated in any other field.

We should also naturally be suspicious of round figures like 100,000. How can anyone prove or disprove this? Out of how many women?

What does not fit very well with what I know is the unproved assertion that rape has become an weapon in ethnic war. In Ituri, they killed pregnant women and unborn babies on ethnic grounds, but did they rape also on those grounds, or just because they were armed men out of control, as in any war?

And has anyone at all done the follow up to find out if there has been an HIV epidemic? There has been enough time to do it.


"SHEER BRUTALITY

HIV may compound the suffering of women raped in the eastern DRC.

Over the past decade, fighters from many different groups have ranged up and down the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo slaughtering people, robbing and destroying property – and also raping tens of thousands of women and girls. Several experts involved with the issue in eastern DRC believe the true number of rape victims in the last ten year to be well over 100,000. Many, including Beatrice M (See previous interview) have been kept as sex slaves for weeks or months on end.

The aim – at least in part – seemed to be to use women as a means to of helping to damage or destroy the entire communities because of their ethnic, tribal or political affiliation: once again – as in Bosnia and Darfur – rape has been used consciously, and with the utmost callousness, as a weapon of war [Conclusion not justified by the evidence given]. A petrified population, deserted villages and what will most probably turn out to be a severe HIV epidemic.

“The conflict itself has made it virtually impossible to obtain reliable statistics,” said Paul De lay, Director of the UNAIDS Evaluation Division, Nevertheless, in 2002, Human Rights Watch estimated that as many as 60 per cent of the armed men roaming the countryside raping, torturing and mutilating women and girls could be HIV- positive, and noted that almost none of the women had access to services and care.

Now, however, medical workers are beginning to get to areas that have been long cut off by conflict. Their findings are chilling.

The NGO Global Rights claimed that just in the province of South Kivu, some 42,000 women were treated in health clinics for “serious sexual assaults” in 2005 alone. Doctors and Women’s groups report that the assaults are notable not only in their scale, but also for their sheer brutality.

One survivor told NGO, Human Rescue: “Sometimes the rapes are so violent that the woman dies… We can be attacked anywhere and at anytime of day or night: in the fields, at the market, on the way to collect water, in our houses… They are destroying us, body and soul.

Aware that they may never reach the majority of the victims, UNHCR and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) have nevertheless been working together since early 2006 to provide survivors with treatment and counseling, by training health-workers how to deal with rape.

Survivors are encouraged to come forward within 72 hours so they can take a post-exposure prophylaxis against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. However, many women continue to conceal the fact that they have been raped because they fear social ostracism.

As part of a regional initiative on AIDS, alongside the governments of Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, UNHCR has also been focusing on establishing comprehensive HIV and AIDS programmes for refugees, returnees, and internally displaced people and local communities in all six countries.

And sensitization about HIV and AIDS is also an integral part of the disarmament. Demobilization and reintegration programme that began in July 2004. The challenge is not just to raise awareness about AIDS among ex-combants, but to try to persuade them to change their sexual behavior.

Participants receive information about the virus, and how it is transmitted. They learn why fighters are a high-risk group. And they are offered voluntary testing and counseling services. But few volunteer to be tested, stoking fears that large numbers of infected demobilized militia will return to their communities and boost the epidemic even further.

....

Sarah Russell
Global Coalition on Women and AIDS.

And the Chicken played the Chorale

The businessman is having his shoes shined by a cheerful teenage boy by the roadside. The mobile phone rings. The big man searches his suit pockets and briefcase but it is the boy who whips his phone out of his back pocket and, without missing a brush stroke, makes an appointment later in the day to shine his caller’s shoes.

This advertisement on Uganda television delighted everyone as they identified with the youth’s cheerfulness and ambition and also realised how their assumptions had been challenged. Mobile phones were now not for the elite alone but for everyone.
Other advertisements showed children calling grandma in the village, and later in very funny vignettes, instantly recognisable characters: the typical ‘briefcase’ businessman with a phone at each ear whose third phone then rings, the woman in the village who instinctively kneels according to her culture when her husband rings, the hairdresser who absently-minded pours water over her client’s face while talking to her boyfriend on the mobile.
Phones for the people
By 2000 when the shoe-shine boy advert aired, the South African company MTN had smashed the monopoly of the existing mobile company, which had priced its phones and services out of the reach of more than a handful of the elite. Now, for less than $100 you could have a phone on the spot, sold by trained salesgirls and boys who were polite to you, cheerfully explained how it worked and you didn’t even have to give your name or fill in a form.
What a contrast with the situation before, when to get a telephone you had to fill in a four-page form with a photograph, get counter-signatures from four levels of local government and then wait and wait, even if you had agreed to give a little something to the installation engineer. In 1990 Uganda had fewer than 1000 business and domestic phones with access outside East Africa. In 2006 there were more than a million ‘mobiles’, all capable of calling anyone in the world.
People often choose communication over other items. A survey that rattled the beer companies in Uganda asked people in the ubiquitous chicken, pork and beer roadside joints what they would buy if they had only $5 left at the end of the evening. The majority chose a phone card over more beer, something which also had real implications for the economy as all the phone card revenue leaves the country, since the phone companies are basically foreign, whereas the beer at least is brewed in Uganda.
It is astonishing how people in ‘officially’ poor countries afford phones, or at least phone calls. Throughout Africa used phone cards litter the streets, even in very ‘deprived’ quarters. I recall being at a seminar in Kinshasa where someone challenged some of the assumptions of NGOs by asking how come, if people were so poor, even the poorer quartiers were littered with discarded phone cards. The person posing the question became pretty unpopular, confirming once again that one should never challenge the humanitarian agencies’ premise that the people are poor!
Of course the cards do not indicate that everyone has a phone. People load up other people’s phones with units they have bought, so they can use them. There are commercial phone providers who sit by the road side with a mobile and live on the tiny excess they charge you to call on their phone. In Uganda one of the companies made its service even better by having ‘fixed mobiles’ that used the mobile network but were in a shop or on a little table. There are also some extra-mobile mobiles rigged up in a sort of booth on the back of a bicycle and circulating the markets. As you would shout Boda! to get a cyclist-taximan to come to pick you up, you shout Phone! and it cycles in a leisurely manner towards you.
When mobile companies started billing in seconds, rather than whole minutes, there was a sudden explosion of roadside ‘simu ya jamii’ (family phones) where you bought a fixed number of seconds, typically in Kenya for 5 shillings (a sixteenth of a dollar). Just enough to say: ‘I am on my way home’ or ‘What colour did you want?’
People adapt to mobiles
Cultural habits have had to adapt as mobile phones have spawned a new culture. Most people are on pre-paid (pay-as-you-go). This means you yourself have paid for your minutes, or seconds, and you are going to treasure them. This is not your boss’s office line which you could use all day.
Gone now are the long Luganda greetings I learned, which start as you spy your friend coming towards you along the village path with ‘Osibye otyanno … bulungi ssebo … mmm …. Eeee …. Mmmm …’ and continuing politely after you have exchanged the formal news (always ‘good’ of course) about family, cattle, crops and so on.
That costs you UNITS which you have paid for. Now, the maximum you can spare is ‘ki?’ or ‘oli okya?’ [Hi! How is it?].
You can talk at length when someone else is paying, but politeness has a battle with economy when you have called someone senior like your father. Quite often I find the person who called me trying to find a quick and polite way to put an end to my ramblings, because he is paying for the call. Occasionally they just cut you off. After all, batteries are always going dead; it’s an excuse everyone has used.
In Congo the old chunky phones displayed LOBATT a word now used universally there to describe any temporary loss of powers. Yes, that too.
It is noticeable how fast people can talk when it is costing them money! The phone companies must make more money if people have to talk in French or English because they are spoken much slower. With Swahili, Lingala or pidgin or a mother-tongue, it goes much, much faster. The Somalis may well hold the record after years of experience on short-wave radios, the only communication after the state collapsed. This has also lead them to treat the mobile more like a megaphone, shouting into them irrespective of the company they are in.
Everyone learns the subtleties of each network’s tariffs and they learn to count the time in their heads. The traditional African good memory kicks in here also. There is an uncanny ability to remember huge strings of numbers, even though the phone has a memory. [I am hard put to remember my own number, and am quite embarrassed by this; I just ask the person nearest me what my number is, should I actually need to know.]
Mobiles and youth
It is with Africa’s youth, just like everywhere, that the mobile has become a central part of culture. A boy without a phone, like the Somali youth without a gun, is, in his own eyes, nothing. It is the single most desirable object from the age of 12 up.
What city girl will go out with a boy if he isn’t able to give her a phone, or if she has one already, at least be pretty generous with phone cards?
How do you juggle your life these days, especially your love life, without a phone? To people who are AM (ante-mobile), it probably seems as though it was easier before the mobile phone but the phone makes it more exciting, and you have to be on your toes! There is the decision about whether to let the person you called know your number, because she might not answer when she sees your number. There is also beeping.
Beeping
Beeping or flashing when you don’t have units is another specific exercise. The fine art of ringing someone and cutting off before he answers is called beeping or flashing. It is done to save money. Some, usually students, who are always broke, keep just enough credit in the phone so they can beep. A student who is in boarding school and has run out of money will count on his mother, at least, to call her back when she beeps. She might well text you some phone credit as well, another art which is finely developed.
Between boy and girl it can be a trial of emotions. Will he call back? Will she just beep back? If it is part of an emotional game it has to be played carefully. Has he rejected you or he also simply doesn’t have units?
sms
Then there is the SMS, much cheaper than a call, and bearing close resemblance to the telegram in that it is necessary to be sparing with words. Look carefully as you sit in a seminar or long meeting and you’ll see that a few people are twiddling their fingers just below the facilitator’s line of sight. These are the inveterate texters catching up on various things, running their offices or their social life. I am one of them and make no apology for it. SMS has given everyone the freedom to multi-task, to use the long periods of boredom while waiting for something to happen or to finish, to send messages all over the world. I try to send messages in good English or French, but most people don’t bother, especially if they have not mastered predictive texting. Even those of us who think we have mastered it are capable of sending off ‘on fire’ instead of ’no fire’ or ‘me’ instead of ‘of’.
The fad for text language with its abbreviations (‘w8 4 me’) can make for problems when the basic knowledge of the language already shaky anyway, but we manage to understand most of the time.
SMS are international and have greatly added to the irritation of the diaspora, illegal migrant or otherwise, in Europe and North America as their family members back at home text them incessantly asking them to send money.
The BBC has greatly increased participation in its Africa service programmes with the use of SMS and so has East African TV which runs text greetings along the bottom of the screen. At a more personal level, last Christmas I had invited a few friends for dinner but the person who was to cook it was running late on a bus coming back from Nairobi. We prepared everything under his text instructions until he swept in with his backpack, two hours before the guests were to arrive and took over.
Inventiveness and adaptability
Mobile phones also give full play to the inventiveness and enterprise of youth. You can buy a cheap ‘locked’ telephone on a contract in London and have it unlocked anywhere in Africa for about $20. Local companies tried to restrict buyers with contracts but no one was having any of it. People wanted to use the freedom of choosing their own tariffs; having two phones (or more likely two SIM cards) is common.
All sorts of accessories are on sale everywhere from new ‘faces’ to flashing phone covers, to different types of earphone. As so often in Africa you can keep something going so much longer than you can in Europe (though bad handling and the climate may also hasten their eventual demise – it is astonishing how many people sit on their phones, or wash them in their shirts, or lose them in the pit latrine).
Every element of a call can be rented or subcontracted. You can pay to have your phone charged in towns that have no electricity. You go for a swim and the lifeguard will put your phone somewhere with everyone else’s and tell you when it rings.
In villages that are just beyond the coverage of the local transmitter entrepreneurs build towers to catch the signal and charge you to climb up. For a year or so the refugee camps at Adjumani were not in the reception zone of any of the companies, except for one tiny patch at one end of the airstrip, and on one termite mound near town where you could make and receive calls. One of the snapshots I never took, to my regret, is of people lining up to climb the termite mound to make calls!
Phones and domination
One of the major indications of the power Rwanda held over Eastern Congo was when their sole mobile company put up huge masts on the hills of the two border towns leading into Congo, providing mobile service to Goma and Bukavu, but much more importantly to their troops deep inside Congo. Rwandacell became a symbol in the conflict with people demonstrating against Rwanda’s hegemony by tearing up their phone cards (after using them of course) to protest Tutsi domination of Eastern Congo.
Generally speaking only a government can do that. Any overflow to another country is usually accidental, though people will take advantage of price differentials. The fact that most phones in the world are GSM and use the same style of SIM card also assists when moving from one country to another. At one time I carried as many as 8 SIM cards around as I travelled. Roaming in Africa is still not common and when it exists it is very expensive.
Now in Southern Sudan
We were all left to wonder then when the new SPLM authorities in South Sudan approved a non-GSM system in Rumbek and Yei. Was it a deliberate continuation of the rebels’ long-standing, and in the days of satellites, meaningless policy of restricting communication, or was it just a mistake? Or more likely, had that entrepreneur got to the right official first?
Whatever it is, South Sudan will go through the same phases as every other country. People will answer their phones in seminars, forget to put them on ‘silent’, use their seniority to get away with being very rude, answering all phones whenever they ring. And, interestingly, this will all sort itself out in a few months. Now it’s actually fairly rare to hear a phone ring in company; most people put them on ‘vibrate’.
Its own set of jokes
The mobile has also spawned its own stories and urban myths; inevitably, given its close connection with all aspects of social life.
Finding your phone
A man noticed that his phone had disappeared while he was having beer and roast chicken in one of the ubiquitous ‘joints’ around Kampala. When you ‘miss’ your phone you call it immediately from another phone and it will ring, unless it has been stolen and the thief has turned it off. In this case it rang quite near, the classical piece he had chosen. In fact, the Ode to Joy.
But where was it coming from? Triangulating in, they reached the chicken boy’s barbecue grill, and there it was, inside one of the cooked chickens waiting to be sold. The boy had lifted the phone with some dirty plates and stuffed it into the chicken.
There were endless reports of phones going off in embarrassing places, like the phone of your friend ringing in your own marital bedroom when you call him. But then Charles and Diana had a bit of a problem like that when Last Number Redial first started.
The phone and the boss
When I was head of the UNICEF sub-office in Goma I was told that Carol Bellamy the head of the agency was coming for 36 hours. Now, heads of UNICEF offices quail at such a visit, which could only be likened to a tsunami coming, and caused at least as much stress as the day a few months later the town was sliced in two by a lava flow.
We had the usual contradictory advance programmes, the usual confusing instructions and of course we more or less stopped everything for the visit. Fellow victims e-mailed me from all over the world giving me advice. One told me: never, ever, let her be separated from her luggage.
Just before the visit I got an e-mail from her office asking me to make sure that a phone would be available for her and to send the number. This I did and added a couple of flippant remarks confirming that it would have international access and that she could call ‘Tallahassee, Schenectady and ..’ without problems’. When I next checked my e-mail there was a flood of messages from top to bottom of the UNICEF hierarchy. I hadn’t noticed that my reply had been automatically copied to Carol herself. Though there was nothing but a few flippant words I was given to understand that I would probably be hung, drawn and quartered, by my own boss first and then by everyone else. I was guilty of lese-majesté.
The day dawned, she arrived on time. My boss, Martin Mogwanja, from Kinshasa came first out of the executive jet, and promptly fell down the steps, injuring his knee. Then, Bill, the security officer who came with them from Kinshasa, without consulting anyone, re-organised the convoy we had set up so carefully. In one of those awful inevitabilities her luggage went to the wrong hotel, because of this re-organisation of the convoy. As Martin sat nursing his knee, and I tried to make small talk while trying to solve the luggage problem on the mobile glued to my ear, I felt my last days had come.
Well, the luggage arrived, the visit went well, despite Carole deciding on our field trip to distribute the lunch sandwiches herself on the plane back from Lake Albert, so I had to run round retrieving the pork ones from the Muslims.
She was interested, very well-informed and pleasant, reserving strong remarks (she can limit her vocabulary to very few short pungent words) for deserving targets. Then having changed in my office for the next lap, she handed me back the phone and laughed and said, well, I didn’t call Tallahassee!
An anti-poverty device
It was not long before Ugandans discovered the business and marketing advantages of mobiles and developed many inventive uses for them. Today an NGO called Foodnet provides national commodity prices by SMS and has wiped out exploitative middlemen by letting the farmer know directly what today’s price for rice, or matooke (cooking banana), or sim-sim is in the main towns.
On the lakes fishermen catch the huge Nile perch, phone up a Kampala hotel from their dugout canoe, bargain and sell it, and then call their cooperative to have a pick-up van with ice waiting at the landing site to rush it to the hotel before lunch. None of this was possible before; perishable commodities were sold for next to nothing to rapacious middlemen.
Whatever you call it (Mobairu, portable, mobailo, cellullaire for starters) the mobile phone is a true anti-poverty device. The fixed and clunky Internet cannot yet fulfil this role.
Opening up the political space, uniting the people
The mobile phone had an astounding effect in the Congo after the country reunified in 2003. People who had lost contact for years could talk to each other. Just as when the phones started again in Goma (courtesy of those huge Rwanda towers) the day after the volcanic eruption people could call across the hot lava to find out what had happened to their house or the rest of the family, people in Bukavu or Kisangani could call their relatives in Kinshasa or Lubumbashi and begin to catch up with their news.
There was another side. In Bunia the militias and their warlords and their representatives in Kinshasa also used the phones to communicate. I wondered sometimes if the occasional cutting off of phone service was to prevent this but over my time there I saw no evidence that the warlords’ phones were being tapped either by the government or by UN forces, though this would have been a sensible thing to do.
In Uganda Joseph Kony, the rebel leader, used to call FM radio phone-in programmes from the bush. It was this that made people realise that the government was not very serious about capturing him, since even if they could not triangulate to find him the should certainly be able to detect whatever generator he was using in the bush to charge the phones.
Drama at the VIP lounge
One day in Uganda I was in a communal taxi coming back from giving lectures at Nkumba University. There was a sudden excitement among the rest of the passengers. They were listening to one of the numerous FM radios which was relaying the voice of someone calling excitedly in. He was calling from the VIP lounge at the airport, not far from where we were. He was an ordinary citizen (OK, not quite, as he was in the VIP lounge) who was witnessing the attempted arrest, or kidnap, by plain-clothes men of a politician who had just defected from the ruling party to join the not-quite-legal opposition.
The breathless reporting by him and others was blow by blow as the target resisted arrest; at one point the German Ambassador intervened and sat on the politician to try to prevent him being carried away. He was finally taken away on some spurious grounds, but the government had been extremely embarrassed and the man was released not long after. The mobile phone and the FM radio had triumphed. So had democracy.
Words: 3550
================================================
Appendix
E-mail or mobile?
The internet spread slowly across Africa at the same time as the mobile was spreading by leaps and bounds. By 2000 most towns had an internet café (in fact ‘café’ now means Internet Café in several countries). When you looked into the café what did you see? Nine young men to one woman. Many doing e-mail, more consulting pornographic sites, and a very few looking anything else up. Now it is changing, in the big cities, and curiously, in Somalia, there are more women, and certain types of business research goes on, like into the sale of second-hand cars from Japan or Dubai.
Many more people are using e-mail, or like the heavily veiled girls you see in Somali internet cafés, instant messaging. Yet, compared to the mobile phone the internet has several disadvantages, starting with the problems of setting it up, maintaining an electricity supply and paying for the line.
I recently watched a person who was just learning about the Internet and was keen to get on line, stumble over the ten to twelve necessary steps from switching on the computer, clicking on icons, through Windows, passwords and other paraphernalia. Even when he reached his e-mail he was completely fazed by the task of sorting out the adverts from the text. Compare this with the way the mobile phone has developed: no wires, simple buttons, portability and privacy.
In Mozambique in 2000, an Australian benevolent foundation connected a teacher’s training college to the Internet. There were three computers, one was in the principal’s office and always worked but no one else had access to it.
One was in the common room. It was usually broken down.
There was one in the library ‘for reference’. A quick glance round the library showed that there was no reference culture in the college. The book ‘selection’ was a set of random donations, not even all in Portuguese. The dusty books, even the encyclopaedias, were virtually never used because the teaching style did not require any independent research. For the library, read Internet.
By contrast, the mobile phone is simple and elegant. You carry it in your hand; it’s ready to work immediately, and in the form of SMS it serves as a sort of simple e-mail. A quick look anywhere in Africa will show that it is the mobile phone which is the really revolutionary device, ensuring a massive flow of information between individuals, saving time and increasing individuals’ efficiency, where transport is poor and mass media slow and not always accurate.
The mobile phone is a precision instrument compared to the blunt tool of the Internet.

Some photos that illustrate some points.

The first one is on the edge of a displaced camp in Northern Uganda. If you look carefully you can see five sets of latrines. Fair enough, but they seem to be from five different generations or at least five different NGOs ... subtly different styles and no doubt incorporated into annual reports. Makes you wonder doesn't it? What exactly are the indicators for the success of a latrine. Who will dare to measure them?




While we are on that I have often wondered if pupils are the beneficiaries of a school and patients are the beneficiaries of a hospital who are the beneficiaries of a prison?















This shade is for the baby sitters and the 126 babies of our 125 young women doing catch-up courses. This is one of the most effective ways to get the youjng women back into education. Contact asutai@yahoo.com for more information.













Do you know what this is all about? In many places a child 'qualifies' to start school if he can touch his ear like this.













This is oone of the youth radios I work on. This one within the War Child Canada project in Baraka DRC. This is before WCC added some more professional equipment - but still it broadcasts and youth get great experience. We also trained the youth in presentation, technical matters and peer education.

Looking back a little on the issue of resource centres and what we thought they could do for youth:


A Day in the Life of Education Base

In a refugee settlement in East Africa there is a complex of buildings which can be reached on foot by most of the people of the settlements. It is situated near the refugees' self-help secondary school and next to two primary schools. The centre is also 'home' in term-time to more than a hundred students who have built their own huts in a 'dormitory area' behind the centre. The following is a description of a typical day in this centre before the refugees moved gradually to farm their own shambas when the government moved towards promoting self-suffiency..

5.30 - 630 a.m.: Students cultivate the garden to raise food for themselves to supplement their rations. Their garden and the nearby plantations (an NGO project) are also used as demonstration plots.
8 - 8.30 a.m.: Students put on their uniform and walk across the valley to schoo1...The library opens but it is not very busy in the mornings. Today refugee and national shop-keepers arrive for a seminar on the marketing of family planning items, arranged by another NGO, using the large thatched open-walled meeting-rooms.
Later, the generator is put on so that a technical demonstration can be made to a vocational group and so water can be pumped up from the valley. The Centre is the 'post office' for the camps, hosts one of the main bulletin boards and has a stationery shop, so there is a gradual flow of people in and out all day. By 4 p.m. the reading-areas arc being 'booked' by students for evening study.
5 -7 p.m.: In the evening there are volleyball games, a cultural group practises on the centre's instruments and a drama group rehearses. The heat of the day has cooled off and there is an atmosphere of relaxation as the students who are not on cooking-duty play games, stroll or just chat with friends.
On Saturdays, young people come from all over the camps for a video show. The generator goes off at ten p.m. and the library closes.
Solar lighting, however, is kept on an hour longer in the reading areas.
Similar activities take place in other centres. Not all are in the refugee settlements; some are found in urban areas. In Congo there are centres linked with the youth’s own radio stations and they play a very important role: providing something for decent young people to do in an area where it is very easy to join the militia.

These centres are not all Education Bases, they do not all do the same things, and they certainly do not belong to Echo Bravo. Nevertheless, this document proposes an overall framework for these centres to operate.
Echo Bravo believes that with its spirit of consultation, those youth who wish to set up centres, or those organisations who wish to help the youth to do this, will appreciate having some guidelines.

Where necessary, and where invited, Echo Bravo is prepared to set up these centres, train people how to run them and, crucially, adapt them to local needs.
In IDP camps, for instance an Education Base may need to provide a stationery shop and video shows. In an urban area it maybe concerned with helping young entrepreneurs to improve their skills.

Echo Bravo! stands for Education Base, or even for Education without Borders.

Echo Bravo! is an organisation of students, teachers, researchers and consultants who work in education in East Africa and beyond. Based in Uganda,

Echo Bravo! draws on experience from Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda and DR Congo.

Echo Bravo! has particular experience in helping young people get an education in very difficult circumstances.

Echo Bravo! has a great deal of experience in refugee and displaced peoples’ camps, in deprived areas, and in war zones.

This document describes the Education Base, a centre for young people where they can get support for their activities, where they can learn more by using a library or the internet or simply where they can come if they have some free-time.

An Education Base will be a drop-in centre in a near a market and taxi-park or in the central area in a camp. It might be in a shop building rented for the purpose, or purpose-built in a large
compound.
It will be open from early morning until late at night. It will actively encourage participation by girls and by unemployed youth.
In some case Echo Bravo will setup and manage Education Base. In others, youth themselves will request assistance to do it. In either case young people will have a major role in managing
Education Base.

Echo Bravo offers a package: establishing standards, providing training courses, materials and advice and helping local Echo Bravos set up independent Education Bases with youth partners.
The attraction for donors and partners to support any Echo Bravo, will be the quality being offered

Youth and their Dilemma
A teenager selling newspapers in the street in a town in the region was berated publicly by the District Commissioner for being a lazy street boy.
The Commissioner failed to see that any boy who is trying to live on the tiny percentage from selling newspapers is certainly a boy who as taken a decision not to be a thief and that he should be praised, not condemned, especially as in this case he was supporting his sister in school. It is not his fault that he does not have a desk in an office, or that the Commissioner has such unsympathetic views.

All over Africa young people are confronted with the obstacles that lie in their way their way to a future, better, life. These are obstacles to do with poverty, with war and conflict, with disease, with mismanagement, with exclusion and with discrimination. Young people cannot solve all or even most of these root causes, nor can their well-wishers.

Some, faced with these obstacles and filled with energy, anger and frustration in equal parts, opt to take a risky short-term route to abetter future. They join gangs, they become soldiers in various militias, they become petty criminals, they become part-time prostitutes. These are not always choices; it is easy to slip into these activities just to have some friendship and a crust to eat. Society does not help much by simultaneously condemning them and providing nothing for them.

Others ‘venture’. Like teenagers throughout history, they become wanderers, refugees or migrate to the cities, always in the hope of something better.

Still other young people, and these are the great majority, do not go down this road. They try their best to find a job, they postpone their desires (not an easy thing at the age of 18), they look for small tasks; above all they seek to improve themselves, by staying in school or by doing courses.

Giving youth the opportunity to do something to improve themselves is what Education Base is all about. It is about giving an alternative, about opening another door. Education Base will not go looking for the lazy or those who believe that some government will always be there to look after them. Education Base will challenge the youth and say: work out what will help you most for the future and we will try to help you with it.

Young people have identified many of the problems already and, in one proportion or another, the same problems are found again and again. To give just two examples.

1) Young people want some skills. The official vocational skills courses in most countries are too long, and you cannot earn any money while doing them It is required to spend two or three years to do Motor-Vehicle Maintenance (with capital letters), for example. Yet you can learn to maintain a car (small letters) in much less time than that, particularly if you learn it bit by bit while you are working in a garage.
2) Many girls cannot complete formal school because they are absent so often. Girls are told to stay at home to look after the sick, look after the baby and so on. If the school system looked hard at this problem they could find some solutions. It could simply be a matter of allowing the girl to come to school classes in the evening instead of the morning (a lot of people would benefit from that, boys girls, young adults) or agreeing with the mother that one girl in the family takes a year off this year and another child next year. Or closing the school on market-day and opening on Saturday instead.
Education Base tries to help with these problems, by looking at them from the point of view of the youth who need help. Education Base has, over the years identified the main groups of youth who want to work for a better future. Many young people, fall into more than one group. In each location moreover youth give different priorities. In towns they will often say that English is a high priority; in rural areas they may be more general about their need for education.
A researcher for Echo Bravo in Northern Uganda described the situation in Gula as follows: The youth engage in different income generating activities to meet the day-to-day challenges. Some of the activities they do include, digging (Leja-leja or casual labour work), selling of foodstuffs and beverages in the bus parks and the trading centres, working as casual labourers on construction sites. Others work in the transport sector as boda boda / bicycle or motorcycle transport, pushcart owners, taxi/bus touts and conductors. Given the poor economic situation, many find themselves in a position of contributing to the livelihood of their families with the little they earn.
Some do not know what might be available to help them. A simple two-day bee-keeping course has given a lot of people in Congo and Uganda a little help on the first step of the economic ladder. Simple providing some modern books of dress patterns helped a tailoring cooperative. A one-day workshop on ‘pleasing the customer’ encouraged some craftsmen to introduce variety into their products when after finally asking their customers what they wanted, the customers told them they were not buying because they already had everything that was on offer.
These are some of them:
· Those who have had to leave school, the drop-outs (or push-outs!)
· Unemployed youth
· Demobilised youth/ those who want to leave the militias
· Employed youth who want to upgrade.
· Self-employed youth, including those with a talent like painters, or musicians
· The disabled
Need for advice
Youth are also in need of personal advice. Education Base usually links with counselling partners, and with HIV/AIDS counsellors in these cases. In Congo they have connections with VCT centres.
In rural areas things are also different. In a small, very isolated town in Sudan, there are primary schools, but there is no secondary school There is no place to read, no way to be kept up to date. There is nothing for young people to do for most of the day, even if they are able to cultivate. Bright minds soon become dull. Those who want to improve themselves soon leave, if they can. Education Base in a place like this would start with a reading-room, a book-box and some training for volunteer teachers, This would be a Sub-base, run by a former secondary student, and would be 'under' a mother-centre.
Need for entertainment
We must not forget the needs, which are real needs, for entertainment, for quizzes debates, for improving general knowledge. Education Bases have libraries, access to the internet and satellite TV. They also have indoor and outdoor games and in two cases, at the request of youth, they have a collection of musical instruments so that local bands can play.
The network of youth centres in Ituri in Congo, called ‘Clubs Espoir de demain’ follow many of the principles of Education Base. They were started by the youth themselves, but they have a particular characteristic: they grew from another activity the youth had already started, that is, setting up and running FM Youth Community Radios. Education Base will use their expertise for those who wish to do the same.
In the next sections we look at some of the problems and how they could be solved in Education Base, in more detail.

Problems of education and training
The problems related to education are many. Education Base can offer some solutions, but it is not designed to replace the primary school system for children of the right age. Nor should it replace secondary schooling, though it can certainly complement it.
Drop-outs, push-outs
Those who leave school before they should or before they want to are the' drop-outs' and the majority of them are girls. They drop out for many reasons. Some drop out because the school is not giving them anything they want or because it is boring and not relevant to what they know they need. Others drop out because they cannot afford to stay in school, not only because they did not have money, but because their family needed their services at home, on the farm or in the market (opportunity cost). In most cases, of course they didn’t drop out, but they were ‘pushed out’ by the obstacles.
There may also be ‘social' reasons. In some societies, girls who marry early are not allowed to return to regular school attend classes.
Another group are the ‘stranded students', often displaced people or those with family problems, who had started school before their lives were disrupted and now have no way to start again.
Here are problems identified by youth in several countries:
Schools and costs
· There are not enough schools.
· Many schools provide a poor quality education that takes too long.
· Schools are very expensive. More and more of the costs of schooling, especially after primary level, are borne by parents and by the students themselves.
· Governments are able to provide less and less help. In most cases there is none at all.
Courses and syllabuses
· Normal courses are too long. Six or seven years in primary school, which with repetition and time out of school often becomes nine or ten years, is often too long. Families cannot release all their children for that length of time.
· Schools do not teach the subjects young people need so they can be self-supporting. Syllabuses are often based on knowledge, rather than skills. They are also very slow to change.
· In the rare cases when skills are available in schools or institutes they are rarely taught in a way which enables the pupils and students to become self-reliant quickly.
Lack of flexibility
· Students may have to do their studies while they are earning an income.
· Schools are not offering a choice which helps the young person, who no longer has the time to waste on trigonometry when what she needs is book-keeping skills or a driving licence.
· School times are not flexible enough for those who have to earn a living and especially for girls and women. Housework, trading, garden and farm work are done in the mornings.
· Schools rarely provide weekend, afternoon or evening options. When they do, they are not consistently provided, so that, for instance, a student can be sure that she can attend in the afternoon every year of her course.
· The school certificate is too rigid. It is impossible to learn single subjects. .
· Impossible to do courses in a different way, faster or perhaps broken up into modular units or sub-courses, or to do only the courses they want to do - or need to do - rather than follow a syllabus which gives them more material than they need.
Independent learning
· There is no place to study, especially in the evenings
· There is no source of reference books
The Education Base can become a designated centre for a distance learning course. Many distance programmes evolve into a sort of half-way house, where a tutor, who is meant to be provide occasional support, becomes a fulltime teacher.
Support for teachers
We should not forget that one way of supporting education efficiently is to support the teachers. So, even if the teachers are not ‘youth’ most Education Bases respect them and welcome them to contribute and use the facilities, even to the extent of using the rooms for coaching lessons (assuming that financial issues are controlled).
· Some Education bases may provide laboratory equipment or visual aids on loan; in one case the teachers’ union set up a laboratory within the Education Base.
· Similarly the Education Base is often used for printing examinations.
· Education Base is often used for refresher courses for teachers, giving them a chance to upgrade.
Other educational needs
· access to general knowledge
· information on current affairs
· civic and political education
· cultural education
· educational advice
· Catch-up and remedial classes

Earning some income, improving skills, and getting on the road to self-reliance
In the unplanned, but busy, area of Katwe in Kampala, there are many craftspeople and artisans. Most are self-employed and live near their premises with their families. The official city barely recognises the existence of Katwe though the transport sector, building industry and commercial life of the city depend on the repair and manufacturing skills found there.
Education Base can provide support to young people in a place like Katwe. The Base can help them by being
· a training centre, where short relevant courses can be done on an hourly or daily basis, or in the evenings after work
· an education centre, with a library and reading facilities, providing courses like book-keeping and English
· an office enabling the member to quote an address and a telephone number on invoices and correspondence. There could be a typist and access to a part-time accountant, a small-business adviser and someone to help with tax.
Needs of Youth: from survey in Uganda
In a survey of equal numbers of boys and girls, conducted in Northern Uganda
· 70% of the respondents expressed a strong desire to attend a skills training education that can enable them acquire immediate employment so as to improve on their earnings and meet their needs.
· 14% of the respondents were interested in attending short professional courses
· 7% of the respondents wished to continue with formal system of education so as to attain the highest level of education (university) in order to compete for professional career opportunities. Several welcomed the idea if it could be accelerated.
· 6% of the respondents did not have any idea of what they could do since from their childhood they had never had a chance to go to school
Only 1% expressed interest in modern agriculture farming methods!
The respondents were specific about what they would like to learn. Education Base would regard Business Studies as essential – as a support, not as an independent course in itself, but as a support.
1) Business studies, Book-keeping, Customer care: the ability and attitude necessary to woo customers and marketing, Stock control (as a book-keeping exercise), Writing business letters, Co-operatives, Managing time and money (and to handle family members who expect hand-outs). Confidence, which is an essential ingredient for success in the market cannot be taught conventionally, but arises from having worked with others and from being familiar with the market.
2) Other enabling courses*: Computer and Secretarial studies, Driving and simple mechanics, Teaching, English/French, Reception and telephone skills.
3) Art and Design, Bee keeping / marketing, Bicycle assembling and repair, Building and Concrete Practice, Carpentry and Joinery, Catering, cookery and hotel management, , , Automobile mechanic, Electrical/ electronics, Food Processing, Mechanical engineering, Modern Agricultural studies, Nursery and Day-care, Plumbing, Tailoring, Tool maintenance and repair , Welding and sheet metal work,
* Value-added: A person who can drive obviously has more economic value than a person who cannot. All other things being equal, he or she should be able to earn more. Another example, for a tailor, would be the ability to do a unique type of embroidery. In this case the skill itself probably enables the tailor to earn more money, but the uniqueness of the skill is also an important part of the added value.
Hiring out tools or lending resources
Consultation with working youth has shown that they would like to be able to hire a tool or access a manual, which is not cheap. Or easily available This already happens in urban markets. As an interim measure, where desired, Education Base would invest in such tools.
For tailors, this may mean a machine, which can do more complex stitches and a set of pattern books from which they can learn new styles. It is easy to imagine what other items could be held, such as diagnostic tools for motor vehicle mechanics.
Reacting to the market
“We trained 25 tailors every three months. Soon we had trained so many that they could hardly find any work to do. Before long we had wiped out the livelihood of the refugee tailors already working in the market ... No one had ever checked if there was actually a need for more tailors. The fact that people wanted to be tailors was enough to encourage us to train them. (Extract from an NGO report)”
All these new elements in the economy have produced their own supporting sectors, ranging from motor-bike repairs, the increased number of petrol stations, making a back passenger cushion for a bicycle, ‘unlocking’ mobile phones brought from overseas (quickly and easily done in Kampala) and a spirit of enterprise and confidence that was not evident in Uganda just a few short years ago.
Short courses
Vocational education which lasts two or three years in schools and institutes is unnecessary in most cases. Many useful skills can be taught in one-day or one-week course. A good example in one area was a bee-keeping course which lasted only two days, but which was thoroughly comprehensive and practical. Forty people walked or cycled, some over very long distances, to attend the course. An NGO had paid the facilitator, but the particpantss were not paid any incentive to attend.

How to occupy time usefully in locations which have few facilities
In many of the areas where Echo Bravo has worked the low state of the economy and the political or military situation has drastically reduced the opportunities for young people to break out of isolation (‘join the world’) and to have even simple entertainment. In many places the evenings are not safe for boys, let alone girls.
Education Base cannot directly address the causes but believes it is addressing them indirectly.
The problem boils down to: 1) a place to be, 2) something to do, 3) a way to feel less isolated.
In many cases what youth need is simply a place to go to, in order to read, to hold discussions or to organise self-help classes. A place to hang out with friends without the ethnic issue being important; though this may need to be worked at.
In one place, everything seemed to be going well when there was only one Education Base. However when a second opened in another part of town because it was felt that more would be able to come with a centre near them, the two centres suddenly were regarded as belonging to one tribe each. It was a great setback, and revealed, as previously mentioned, that Education Base cannot solve fundamental problems by itself. In this case, the fact that the town was ethnically divided.
Education Base can provide various types of entertainment, organised by the youth:
· video shows (avoiding, if possible, violence and pornography)
· cultural activities
· debates (encouraging the debaters to use the facilities to do some research)
· drama productions
· quizzes
· various sports and games (indoor and outdoor)
· discos, where the culture allows
· radio, TV (satellite and video/DVD)
Active, not only passive: Education Base as Club
For many of these activities it is useful to regard the Education Base as a club or as hosting a group of clubs. This is encouraged as it is here that seeds of organisation, leadership and management are sown. As previously mentioned, these are a crucial part of the development of young people and their society. It is within these activities that we painlessly ‘smuggle’ civic education and ideas of democracy, freedom and good governance.
Advice and counselling on educational and personal matters
Education Base has sometimes been called the ‘Student’s Friend’ or the Young Person’s friend. One of the reasons for this is that many organisers of Education Base arrange to provide advice for the members. This can be educational advice, careers advice, counselling or it can be life skills education.
This is normally done with a partner.
Psychosocial counselling
This is particularly true for psycho-social counselling which is NOT to be done by people who are not trained. A psychosocial programme requires experienced staff with professional expertise, but most of all it needs to carry through what has been started -- since half-counselling may be as disastrous.
Life Skills
'Life Skills refers to the set of psychological and social skills which we develop as we get older.
HIV/AIDS
Education about HIV /AIDS, STIs, pregnancy
is particularly important in disrupted communities. It is most important to ensure that the campaign reaches girls and women. Campaigns which already exist in countries heavily hit by AIDS are often personal and very frank. Supporting agencies should be prepared for resistance to the frankness.
VCT
In the context of HIV/AIDS Education Base may make arrangements with a partner for testing and counselling.
Media/radio/publications
Education Base can encourage publishing of pamphlets and newsletters. A large base (known also as mother-base) can have copy-print equipment.
A popular and useful activity is for the centre to host a journalism club and run at least a wall-newspaper, if not a magazine. In Congo this has gone further: the youth often set up and run small local FM stations.
Indeed in Ituri, the club started with the radio, then became a Listening Club. Where the centre has sometimes grown from a local youth FM radio, at least one centre in a region would try to get studio and recoding equipment from donors.
Hosting
Education Base would be built with space to host many kinds of activities, provided by its own management or by others. These would range from a place for exams to be held occasionally (Education Base would develop a reputation for integrity, and probably provide the only safe around) to teacher’s unions, football clubs and musical groups.
In many cases Education Base would hope to raise funds for equipment, such as musical instruments which could be loaned.
As far as sports are concerned, depending on the land available, the centre would provide marked out pitches, at least for volleyball and similar activities.

Demonstrations and Models

Education Base can be used to provide demonstrations of good practice in many fields. For instance, the latrines should be clean and should illustrate the best hygienic methods. The VIP and similar latrine will not only be demonstrated but used.

Charts and demonstration models on topics such as health or agriculture should be displayed along with examples of appropriate technology. They should be displayed where as many people as possible will see them and use them and they should be updated regularly. .
In a different but equally important way the Base should show that it exists for all people, both girls and boys by providing equal facilities and an equal welcome to everyone.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly Education Base will show that youth can manage a centre well and that participatory management by the users of Education Base can be exercised and valued and that leadership can be developed.

A note I wrote to UNICEF in New York after seeing that UNICEF claimed to have invented the School in a Box in 1994 - in Tanzania!

I have just recently seen the News Note: UNICEF celebrates 60 years for children where the following sentence occurs:

‘Returning hundreds of thousands of children affected by armed conflict and natural disaster to school, thanks to the invention of UNICEF’s school in a box’.

It is important to put on record that this is not true. The Sudan Open Learning organisation was probably the first organisation to create such a kit for emergencies for the Southern Sudanese in displacement camps, whose temporary schools were being knocked down by the authorities every so often. The name ‘School in a Box’ and the kit itself were used in Khartoum from 1988. This is well attested.

UNESCO-PEER learned about the kit and the name there in 1990, and UNICEF came later. The Norwegian Refugee Council also had a huge role to play in developing the kit concept.
In the UNHCR education workshop in Nairobi UNICEF/UNESCO-PEER/UNHCR displayed the Teacher Emergency package together – this was put together for Rwanda after the genocide.
In the evaluation I did of UNICEF’s education programmes in Somalia in 1995 the school kit is referred to, as being done in collaboration with UNESCO-PEER.
I worked in UNICEF on the Zambian version (Zedukit) in 1997 – at that time everyone in UNICEF knew that the School in a box was not a new concept. In the Zedukit we added the concept of a very comprehensive teacher training manual (the Spark manual –still going strong I believe)

UNICEF most definitely did not invent the School in a Box, and should not claim that it did! It is simpler and more accurate to say that UNICEF ‘further developed and greatly expanded the use of’ … It sounds better, anyway.

=============================================================

In a similar way it is to be noted that in the Jesuit Refugee Service 25th anniversary book they claim to have set up the Foundation course in Khartoum, when in fact it was provided for them by the Sudan Open Learning Unit which I headed at the time.

On a 2001 visit to Kalemie on Lake Tanganyika with the Norwegian Refugee Council we met the Provincial Education officer, in this part of Katanga separated from the rest by the cease-fire line. We went through the usual questions about school statistics and drop-out and when we came to the question of girls’ drop-out in upper primary, the official told us that it was all because of the phosphorus … in the lake. This stopped us in our tracks. Checking that we had not misunderstood his French we asked for some kind of elaboration.

As though it was the most obvious thing in the world he told us that the lake was full of phosphorus, so the fish were also. Boys ate the fish, which made them randy and they made all the girls pregnant. So they dropped out of school. As an explanation it had a certain weird logic, and of course it is a problem everywhere in Africa that as girls get older and enter puberty they drop out of school. They marry (‘are married’) or get pregnant, or simply get badly treated by boys and teachers as they show the signs of womanhood.

Cogent arguments have been put forward for having separate upper primary girls’ schools to get them through these years particularly in slum or refugee camp environments.