Slates

UNICEF in Chad, like in many other countries gives primary school kits both to Chadian schools and to schools in the camps for refugees from Darfur, Sudan.   

 

These kits usually contain slates and because of the fact that the ordering is often centralized the kit may contain slates whether the teachers in the receiving country use them or not. As it happens, Sudanese teachers do not have a culture of using slates in their teaching.  However, as a colleague showed me, the slates do not go to waste. Four slates laid flat side by side make an excellent table top and these tables are beginning to be found in the small restaurants in the camps, and doubtless in homes. 

 

In this there is a throwback to the donation of cloth number and alphabet charts by UNESCO-PEER amongst others in the Great Lakes Region and the Horn of Africa.

 

They made excellent tablecloths and curtains.