Tough life for Ivorian refugee students

Penigossoro Yeo, 22, is awaiting to sit his final exams at secondary school. If he does well, he hopes to study medicine at the University of Abidjan in his home country of Cote d'Ivoire. However, the immediate future for this soft-spoken but very focused young man is uncertain. He fled to Burkina Faso nearly three months ago from Korhogo, a town in the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire, where most schools have been closed since the civil war erupted in September 2002. Yeo and his 12-year-old brother made their way to Burkina Faso's second city of Bobo Dioulasso, 150 km north of the border. There, like hundreds of other youngsters fleeing the north of Cote d'Ivoire to continue their interrupted education, they managed to find places in the city's overcrowded schools. "I am here with the hope that the war will end soon," Yeo told IRIN outside their single-roomed mud hut in a poor suburb of the town. "I follow the news daily and expect to hear of a breakthrough before the end of the academic year," he said. Yeo and his brother pay less than US $10 a month in rent for their humble dwelling, but despite the poverty in which they are forced to live, they feel welcome. "The people here are nice, there is no discrimination," Yeo noted. "We are well integrated and things work well with the local people here," he added. Yeo and his brother are among a group of 80 pupils from Korhogo who are currently studying at schools in Bobo Dioulasso. Most of them fled there in October when fighting broke out between rival groups of rebels in their home town following an unsuccessful attempt to break into the local office of the Central Bank of West African States. There are no official statistics, but Ivorian students in Bobo Dioulasso said about 350 youths from the rebel-held north had congregated in the city to try and continue their interrupted schooling. Most are desperately short of money since all banks in the north of Cote d'Ivoire have been closed for the past 15 months and the Western Union money transfer system no longer operates there. Some make the journey home every few weeks to get more money. Some work to help pay their school fees and living costs. Others live on the verge of starvation. In addition to refugee children from Ivorian families, Bobo Dioulasso, also plays host to 425 children who are the registered sons and daughters of Burkinabe immigrants living in Cote d'Ivoire. Of these, 56 have received help from the Roman Catholic church to enrol in local schools. The large Burkinabe community in Cote d'Ivoire suffered government persecution following the outbreak of the civil war because Burkina Faso was perceived to be supporting the northern rebels. As a result, nearly 350,000 Burkinabe immigrants have fled back across the border. Burkina Faso's cash-strapped government is doing what it can to integrate the children of the exodus into local schools that are already heavily overcrowded and badly under-resourced. There are 220 pupils to every teacher in some primary schools in Bobo Dioulasso, while in secondary schools class sizes have swollen as high as 120. "When they come to see us we treat them without discrimination," Ousmane Bologo, the director of secondary education for Burkina Faso's western region told IRIN. He heads the education branch of the Provincial Committee for Emergency Aid (Coprosur), an organisation set up to assist all those fleeing the Ivorian crisis. "We have been asked to enrol all even those who come to us without documents. They have already lost one school year in the north where most of them come from," he noted. Teachers as well as pupils have crossed the border to seek paid employment pending the reopening of government schools in the north of Cote d'Ivoire. Balogo noted that one Ivorian physics teacher was working at a secondary school in Bobo Dioulasso. During 2003, he said, Coprosur helped to enrol 10 students from Cote d'Ivoire at the University of Ouagadougou in the capital Ouagadougou. Three of these were Ivorian nationals and seven were the children of Burkinabe immigrants to the country. Many of the Ivorian children fleeing to Burkina Faso to continue their education are virtually destitute and have to rely on their wits to survive. Life is particularly hard for 18-year-old Tenedja Coulibaly, who is in her final year of high school. She arrived in Bobo Dioulasso with her younger brother three months ago. They brought with them a sack of rice and enough money to pay six months of school fees. Since then, the two children have now lost touch with their mother who lives in Ferkessedougou, a town in northern Cote d'Ivoire that lies on the main road and railway line to Burkina Faso. Tenedja now ekes a living by selling sweets to her school-mates. She and her brother each had to pay US $70 each in fees to start attending a private secondary school, where there are about 100 other Ivorian students. Now they somehow have to find the money to pay for their second semester as well as US $13 dollars a month to pay for their lodgings and additional cash to buy food. Tenedja, a very skinny girl, told IRIN they were getting by at present on a diet of plain boiled rice. "We cannot continue in private schools. We'll be forced to go back home if we do not get places in public schools," she said. Education Ministry officials said moves were under way to scrap the higher $19 examination fee payable by foreign students so that they will only have to pay the $4 demanded from Burkinabe students when the next round of exams begins in May 2004. They also said the government was trying to encourage non-governmental organisations to assist these students who have flocked across the border hungry for knowledge by providing them with books and a subsistence allowance. An awareness campaign has meanwhile been launched to try and persuade local people to accommodate these youngsters free of charge. Moise Yeo, 18, an Ivorian student who arrived in Bobo Dioulasso with his five brothers and sisters at the end of October, has been a benificiary of the change in attitudes which this has produced. "Initially we were rejected because people said that Ivorians were not serious," he told IRIN. Yeo was a student in the rebel capital Bouake in central Cote d'Ivoire and was on holidays at Korhogo with his family when skirmishes broke out there in October. He has had to shuttle between Korhogo and Bobo Dioulasso to get money and bring in food for his younger brothers and sisters, the youngest of whom is 12. But harassment by the rebel fighters at checkpoints along the road has made this increasingly difficult. "Our landlord is now paying for our electricity and is often giving us food and money," Yeo said. Yeo is trying to set up an association of the Ivorian students in Burkina Faso, but he has not contacted the Ivorian embassy in Ouagadougou about the plan, because all of them come from the north. He is afraid that in the government's eyes that makes them "the natural allies of the rebels". However, a ray of hope now lies in a Luxemburg-sponsored project set up in September 2003 to assist young people in needy situations. The Poverty Reduction among the Youth project (REPAJE), headed by Siaka Ouattara, interviewed some 300 people, 95 percent of whom were students, between September and November. It will publish a list of those selected to receive financial assistance in January. "We take into account the social situation, but also we have been asked by our donors not to look at nationality before granting help to students," Ouattara said. "The selection is taking more time because some of them we have discovered are not genuine students. We want to deal with the needy ones," he added. Some 60 Ivorian students have applied for financial assistance from REPAJE. If they are successful, the project will pay their full tuition fees and provide them with a book allowance and pocket money. Successful candidates will be funded for up to three years.