Impoverished parents dig into own pockets to pay for untrained teachers

Ahlimba has drawn the short straw at this crumbling Togolese school. While her teaching colleagues are on the somewhat unreliable state payroll, she depends entirely on what her pupils’ parents can scrape together for her monthly salary. “I do the same work as the others, but there are some months when I’m not paid at all,” the slender 25-year-old told IRIN. “I still haven’t received January’s salary yet. I’m supposed to get 10,000 CFA (US$20) a month but sometimes the parents don’t have the cash, and even when they do, that’s still a quarter of what the others get.” Ahlimba is one of an increasing number of volunteer teachers across this tiny West African nation, drafted in by parents who are taking their children’s education into their own hands after seeing the woeful capacity of the state. So why does she do it? “I’m not happy about it but I teach the children because they shouldn’t be penalised,” Ahlimba said. “And besides what else would I go and do? I was doing absolutely nothing before this.” Like most of the staff at this village school in Anfoin-Tota in the far southeast of Togo, Ahlimba failed to complete secondary school and has never received any formal training to teach. “This is Togo,” sighs her colleague, 33-year-old Akouete Attiogbe. “We have a saying here: If there’s no hound to take hunting, just take a sheep instead.” Even though the Togolese government pays his salary, Attiogbe only gets the monthly base rate of 43,000 CFA (US$87). He receives none of the extra discretionary payments to which he is entitled and the state owes him five months of arrears. The village school where he and five other staff teach almost 200 pupils is in poor shape. On the brink The crumbling walls barely come up to waist height and the straw roof is disintegrating. During the rainy season lessons often have to be cancelled because water gushes into the classrooms. A few textbooks are available, but the pupils have to provide their own pens and exercise books. “We manage but we don’t have enough books and folders. And we could do with more tables and chairs,” Attiogbe said. “Sometimes we’re forced to put four children on a bench, and when they’re crammed together like that it’s no good for working.” Some 60 km away in the oceanside capital, Lome, aid workers says that the state education system is teetering on the brink because of a lack of funds.

Children at school in Hangoume-Akolisse. The building was constructed entirely with materials donated by parents

Four decades of poor governance under President Gnassingbe Eyadema, coupled with a 12-year freeze on European Union aid, have taken their toll. According to one western diplomat who follows economic affairs, the average income in Togo has fallen to around $270 a year today from over $600 in the 1980s. And with the political uncertainty enveloping Togo following Eyadema's death two weeks ago, nothing is likely to change anytime soon. “Teachers that retire are not being replaced. The small number of young people that are being recruited aren’t getting proper training,” Claudine Mensah, the country director of aid agency CARE, told IRIN. “Volunteer teachers have sprung up in the last 10 years and become more and more common,” she explained. “People are getting poorer and poorer and yet are being forced to pay for their kids education. In some cases when the teacher’s salary falls short, the children go and work in his fields one day a week as compensation.” No help from state In the mud-hut village of Hangoume-Akolisse, 35-year-old Sodahun Atsou knows all about scrabbling around for cash so her two children can go to school. Her husband died 10 years ago so she only has to pay half the annual school fee of 2,000 CFA (US$4) for each child. But that is problem enough. Atsou grows rice and manioc in the surrounding red dirt fields. The last harvest was lean though. She grew just enough to feed her family and there was no surplus to sell so she has developed a sideline selling palm oil to ensure her kids get the education that she missed out on.

Sodahun Atsou does everything she can to get her children the schooling she never had

“Life is getting more and more expensive and the land is getting less fertile. If children go to school the world opens up to them,” Atsou told IRIN, standing in refuse spilling over the doorstep of her mud-hut, a small strip of fabric wrapped about her. Parents in Hangoume-Akolisse get no help from the state to educate their children. The village's two classrooms were built last year, thanks to donations of sand and straw from various local families and all three teachers at the school are paid with community donations. “We get 10,000 CFA (US$20) a month but it’s tight. I worry about being able to put enough food on the table for my own family,” said 33-year-old Topeagno Agbessi-Anake, the school’s senior teacher. “But education is the building block for any kind of development. Without us teachers, the kids would be sitting at home bored. And leaving children with nothing to do is risky. Child trafficking is a problem in Togo and they become vulnerable to that,” the father of two added. One pupil among the 90 at the school has had first hand experience of that exploitation. Thirteen-year-old Mama told IRIN she was taken to the capital Lome and forced to work as a street vendor selling onions. She was often beaten. Now she is back in the village learning how to read and write alongside her classmates. Despite the school’s success and the pupils’ beaming faces, Agbessi-Anake says volunteer teachers cannot continue being the norm in Togo and the government has to start pulling its weight. “It’s not just education, it’s the general situation in the country," the village teacher said. "It’s no good at all. The state isn’t doing its job and it needs to get its act together.”