Darhas Koranic School

Today our History of Islam teacher came up from Dakar for a trip to a nearby Koranic School. This meant that the women of the group had to wear headscarves and long skirts, which created a last minute scramble for these items and borrowing from several people (thanks for the skirt Alejandra!) Once we arrived, we sat in the yard (dirt patch) of the school on mats and talked with some of the teachers and advanced students from the school. Overall I didn’t find it that interesting. It was mostly a combination of “it’s a koranic school” and “look they have to memorize it all.” One interesting point was that they served us bissap. It’s a delicious drink made hibiscus flowers, mint and sugar. Of course, since it’s Senegal they had reused the containers that they were served in, which just happened to be motor oil bottles.  No biggie though, they didn’t taste like it at all, just a little fishy from the ice bucket they had been in.

After talking with the representatives for about 2 hours we looked into the 4 classrooms they had.  Each room had about 30 children, or at least as many could be fit in there as humanly possible, a chalkboard in the front, which beautiful Arabic writing, mats for the children to sit on and that was it. There was no power. No books, nothing. Some of the kids had slates with the day’s passage to memorize, but really nothing. Seeing the resources of Senegalese schools whether public (University Cheik Anta Diop in Dakar) or private (koranic school) has definitely convinced me not to complain about Kalamazoo’s resources. Though there is a trade of that university is free for all students, including room and board, though with rigorous exams at the end of each year, and the suspicion that not much learning actually goes on it’s still something to remember that I don’t have to worry about the power going off in the middle of a Kalamazoo class.

The chanting of the students was a beautiful thing to listen to, I love the sound of Arabic. Again, it was nice to get out of the classroom and see other things but overall not that striking of an experience, but I’m glad I got to go.