School in Sebeun Tarbema
Abstract
In early 2021, Calvin visited a village called Sebeun Tarbema when exploring soil profiles and the different natural landscapes of Sierra Leone. Right away, Calvin knew this village was extremely special, but also needed a lot of help. The most basic essentials are unable to reach this village because of the road conditions and distance from the city. This village survives on what it can gather from the surrounding environment. In early 2022, Calvin asked our in-country director, Mohamed, to visit them to understand the current condition of the community. Mohamed was appalled by what he saw. The school they used last year was just a crop-drying facility the kids had to work for them. This year, the Ministry of Agriculture took it over and didn’t give them a new place to attend school. Mohamed found the community in mayhem, with the children attending school in the bush. Over 70 children have dropped out in 2022, and more continue to leave every week from dangers in the bush such as snakes, spiders, and bacterial infections. In May of 2022, the Growing the Grassroots board members visited the village. The kids are now attending class in a broken-down church to protect them from the harsh environment, but it isn’t a long-term solution. We found a contractor and found a way to engage the community in this project to ensure long-lasting success.
The broken-down church where kids are attending school in Sebeun Tarbema.
State of Sebeun Tarbema in 2021
In February of 2021, Calvin visited Sebeun Tarbema for the first time with his friend from Tikonko named Ahmed. Calvin was told that the village was extremely remote, but also had beautiful natural landscapes and unique soil profiles that any agronomist would find highly interesting.
Transportation Is Not Feasible
After taking an endless motorbike ride consistent with the feeling of seasickness, and riding over fallen trees that acted as bridges, Calvin and Ahmed arrived at Sebeun Tarbema. Calvin was one of the first white people the villagers had seen in the last 40 years. Sebeun Tarbema is really an interesting place. It is reminiscent of what you’d imagine village life looking like back in the 1800s. That village is so remote it is nearly impossible to transport anything there.
No Communication or Development
There are no radio towers, no phone signals, no electricity, or even a working water pump in the village. Many roofs are still made of palm leaves, which have been generally outdated for years. The population of the village is roughly 500 people, with 70% under 35 years old.
There is no industry and not much of anything for the citizens to do, so the birth rate is extremely high, and the age of girls giving birth is very young. There are almost no elderly there, and we suspect it’s because most men and women die by ~55 years old; the average age of a Sierra Leonean. Africa is called the land of no dentist, and therefore tooth abscess is a common cause of death.
Calvin Meets Ambrose Suliman
Needless to say, when Calvin spent the day in Sebeun Tarbema absorbing everything he could, he realized this was a very special place. It was very vulnerable, but also had a lot of potential for growth.
During his visit, Calvin met a man named Ambrose Suliman; but everyone calls him Ambush. Ambush moved to this village over 10 years ago and never left. Ambush is a university scholar, and one of the most fair-minded and intelligent people Calvin has ever met in his life. Calvin was completely dumbfounded as to why a man of this nature would move down to a village like this and never leave. When Calvin asked that exact question to him, Ambush could only tell him, “Look at this place, this village is a very special place. But they need help. A lot of help. When I came here, there wasn’t even a clinic for pregnant women and children. I helped lobby the government and get funding to build one. There was no church here, and there is still no school”. It was hard to believe a community made up of 500 people could stay afloat without many of these basic necessities, but they made it work.
Calvin inspecting the unique soil found in Sebeun Tarbema in 2021.
The Letter That Stuck With Calvin
About a month later, Ambush wrote Calvin a letter and had it delivered to his house in Tikonko. It stated that a woman in Sebeun Tarbema was pregnant and at risk of dying due to her health status and the only village nurse was out of town. Ambush asked Calvin for help in finding her medical attention at the birth waiting home where Calvin was volunteering at. After many attempts over many days, there was nothing that anyone could do. She was too far along to be taken on a motorbike, and cars/trucks cannot make it to Sebeun Tarbema. Even to this day, Ambush won’t tell Calvin the fate of that woman back in 2021. Calvin never forgot that and kept Sebeun Tarbema at the forefront of his mind.
Calvin and the villagers of Sebeun Tarbema in 2021 during the first visit.
GTGR Team Visits Sebeun Tarbema in 2022
By the time we arrived in Sebeun Tarbema in May of 2022, there were just 123 children left in school being managed by just one volunteer teacher. Luckily, the remaining students had managed to move to the makeshift old church structure in town. Ambush also sponsored the building of this project, but a lack of manpower and finances ended up halting the construction of the church before it was ever finished back in 2005. Today, it sits as an unfinished skeleton of a church. While it does technically put a roof over the heads of the teacher and students, its open floor plan and unfinished windows/doorways open the church up to the rest of the village, making it a difficult place to focus and facilitate learning.
Local children living in Sebeun Tarbema that have resorted to studying in the harsh bushland.
How Do We Get Teachers in the New School?
It’s time to build this village a school. It’s time to stop watching 95% of children fall into the same poverty cycle as their parents. The need for a school is great, but the need to facilitate and encourage qualified teachers is even more important, which is why we will be building them living quarters too. In order to encourage teachers to come to a village like Sebeun Tarbema, it requires a lot of effort. This village is extremely isolated, so traveling to the cities on the weekends for relaxation and entertainment is out. Going to the markets on a daily basis to buy a diverse diet of foods is out. Connecting with the world outside the village through phones or computers is out. So what could ever entice a qualified teacher to come here?
The answer is a very dynamic one, but the bottom line is it takes the right type of person. As of June 2022, nearly all the teachers in Sierra Leone are on strike because no one has gotten paid by the government since March. The one teacher down in Sebeun Tarbema is still working, although he hasn’t received a paycheck from the government in at least one year. The reason he does it is for the love of teaching and the passion he has for the kids. Calvin has spent hours upon hours interviewing him and talking with him. His heart is pure. It takes a special person like that to be able to work in a village like Sebeun Tarbema. That is not to say that we can’t do things to encourage more teachers to come.
Teachers’ Quarters to Incentivize
The first thing we plan on doing to increase demand to work in this village is to build a teachers’ quarters for four teachers. These teachers' quarters will be spacious enough to allow the teachers to bring their family members and live rent-free in the spaces. Each living quarter will be equipped with a private bathroom, a living room area, a bedroom, and an outdoor porch area to relax in.
As a teacher, wherever you relocate for work you are responsible for finding your own housing. No teacher is willing to give up their home in the city to buy or build a home down in the village where they lose all of life's comfortable amenities. Giving these teachers, and their families, a place to live with comfortable amenities, makes everything more convenient for them.
Additionally, we plan on stocking this school with solar-power capabilities to make this building the first in the village with lights. We want to install a solar pump as well (if funding allows us), which would provide clean, pressurized water to the students and teachers as their source of drinking water.
Local children in Sebeun Tarbema eating lunch halfway through the school day in the broken-down church being used as a school.
What Is the School Going to Look Like?
In the villages of Sierra Leone, the average classroom size is 12x20 feet. That size classroom will typically hold 30-40 children and one teacher. I’d encourage anyone reading this to pause and think about how small of a space that is for 30-40 elementary school students to sit in all day without air conditioning.
Classroom Specifications
The classrooms we are building in this school are going to be 25x35 ft. There will be multiple, large windows for circulation, and a strong cement foundation and walls to protect against the harsh rains and winds of the rainy season. The solid structure will also protect against predators and insects.
Additional Rooms
Directly across from the classrooms are the teachers’ lounge and head office. This type of environment will make any teacher feel like a university professor. The teachers will be able to use these areas to get some space, collaborate, and plan out their lessons.
Reward the Teachers
Lastly, we want to find a way to incentivize the teachers and keep them happy as they work. We think this project needs continual work with the teachers in order for this to find long-term success. That being said, in addition to the government salaries they should be receiving, we also want to supply our teachers with bags of rice (the staple crop used for every meal) as gifts, and even other monetary bonuses during the holidays.
Ensuring This Project Is Successful
A major key to ensuring projects like these will be sustainable for the long term is to engage the community. That is more important than raising donations, having staff members on your payroll, or anything else you want to do in Africa.
Engage the Community
You must engage the community you want to work in, and NOT just impose your ideas and projects onto them. If you decide to go that route the community will act gracious and thankful for the work you’re doing at the moment, but as soon as the supervision leaves and the work falls onto the community, they will let the project die entirely. And it’s not because you didn’t build a nice enough water pump, or a nice enough school or agricultural farm. It’s because when you left, there was no thought put into who is responsible for maintaining that project in the future. You need to get painfully specific a lot of times to ensure everyone is on the same page.
For this school project, for example, we are signing contracts with locals, and setting expectations as to who is in charge of each responsibility. We need to know that there are locals who can maintain the paint on the school, the school gardens, the football (soccer) field, and the water pump. If no one claims these responsibilities, then who will just volunteer their time and money to do these things? No one is the obvious answer.
Make Them Feel Part of a Team
The next thing we’re doing is buying Growing the Grassroots shirts for all the stakeholders involved in this project. Everyone who has a role in maintaining or supporting the project will be wearing matching shirts.
Get Locals Involved in the Project
One more thing we’re doing to engage the locals is asking them for assistance in clearing the bushland for us to build the school. We could easily pay a group to come in and clear the land within a couple of days, but instead, we asked the locals to get involved and clear it for us.
We provided them with a 50 kg bag of rice and new tools for the job, so they were highly motivated to volunteer their time and energy toward clearing the bush. Starting on day one, the locals were engaged and anticipated the building of the school. Now we know the project will be successful.
Calvin and Jesse explaining to the villagers of Sebeun Tarbema that we are building a school in their village.
Hire the Right People
The last important piece of the puzzle to ensure a contracted job goes to plan in a developing area such as the Southern Province of Sierra Leone is hiring a local foreman to supervise the work. This local foreman should be someone from the community or someone who knows the community very well and is an unbiased third party watching over the entire project. This person should have no ties to the contracting company, and should not be particularly close to the stakeholders of the community.
The reason for all of that is to ensure the foreman you hire doesn’t become corrupted or find ways to steal supplies or launder money with anyone else on the job. Calvin has seen it too many times when a development project comes to a town, and the stakeholders and other leaders join forces to ensure they keep all the development money amongst themselves and don’t have anyone who will blow the whistle on their operation. We want to ensure we facilitate a relaxed and stress-free work environment, where our employees make good salaries and enjoy coming to work for us. As long as we do that, any Sierra Leonean will recognize how lucky they are to find work with an organization like this one, and they won’t be so willing to squander that opportunity. Even the foreman won’t want to risk that, and the foreman only has stipend pay with us for six months on this project. But, our foreman also knows that if future projects come about, he will be the first one we contact.
Avoid Internal Corruption
A huge reason so many nonprofits in Africa experience internal corruption is that most organizations don’t pay their employees well enough. You really start to see internal corruption when someone's stomach becomes larger than their pockets. We can’t even be honest in Europe or North America where we have enough food to eat every day. We still see internal corruption in corporations all the time.
To ensure you have the best team working with you in Africa you can, you need to do three things:
Pay them properly.
Treat them as you would your own brother or sister.
Have complete trust in them. You need to trust them to get the job done and trust them until they give you a reason not to. When we all decided to fully trust in ourselves, trust each other, and trust this organization, all of us started to really see and believe in the vision of Growing the Grassroots, and all that we will accomplish.
We have all the pieces, except for one in place now, and the contracting company is ready to begin the project. The last piece of the puzzle is funding. To be transparent, this is taking longer than we originally thought. All that does is add more motivation and drive to every team member to find ways to raise money for these children.
Currently, we are raising money through the following avenues:
Every board member is reaching out to friends and family.
Our social media team is consistently posting on Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, and LinkedIn.
Starting in November 2022 we will engage our email list with weekly blogs and monthly newsletters.
Every board member is reaching out to companies and influencers that align with our mission.
We pass out business cards door-to-door to increase word of mouth.
We started a challenge called “Hungry for Education” to raise awareness for the school we are building in Sebeun Tarbema.
In the meantime, to keep the community in Sebeun Tarbema in the loop, our in-country staff is making regular visits to update them. We don’t want them to think that we have forgotten about them or given them another false promise that so many other people and organizations have given them before. We visit them to be transparent and to maintain the trust that we will see this project through.
