What Emily Did

1 mars 2012

Several things have happened at school recently.

The second term has just finished, so we’ve been having conseils de classe, end-of-term reunions of all the teachers for each class plus two class-elected students. It’s a time to see how each student’s been doing over the term and either encourage him/her to keep up the good work or warn him/her about what terrible things will happen if he/she carries on misbehaving and not working properly.

It’s also a time to learn things about our students that they don’t necessarily tell us during lessons. This is when I learnt that Kassam, year 9, was dyslexic and couldn’t follow the lessons properly. That Hachimya, year 10, had just given birth to her second child, which was why she had been absent so often during the term. That the mother of Echat, year 11, had been caught residing illegally in Mayotte with no valid identity papers, and that Echat had therefore been sent to Anjouan, the neighbouring Comoros island, with her mother. Which explains why she suddenly disappeared after the Christmas holidays and hasn’t been seen since. That Ali Chidou, also year 11, had just managed to come back to Mayotte after two years of being de-schooled in Anjouan, and that was why his marks were so low and why he didn’t seem to be paying attention in class: he’d been put in Year 11 because of his age, but he hadn’t been to school since Year 9, so was having difficulty following the harder work.

(Names have been changed, just in case).

Mayotte is one of four Comoros islands, made up of Mayotte, Anjouan, Mohéli and Grande Comore. These islands used to stick together, but the first separation was made in eighteen fifty something, when Mayotte was adopted as a French territory. Since then, Mayotte has claimed its Frenchness “in order to remain free”, whereas the remaining Comoros islands have claimed their independence and put pressure on Mayotte to join them. In April last year, Mayotte was made a French department following a referendum. The problem for Mayotte is that they were asked if they wanted to become a French department for incomplete reasons: the basic question they were asked was “Do you want more money?”. To which 96% of them said yes, of course we do, what a question.

Now the only French department out of the group of four islands, Mayotte has become a sort of paradise for the other three, whose general revenue and living standards are ten times lower than those in Mayotte. Because of the French “soil rights”, any baby born on a French territory receives French nationality and all the rights and advantages that go with it. So there is a lot – I really mean a lot – of clandestine immigration from the other three islands, with an enormous number of pregnant women travelling across to give birth in Mayotte. Which is why Mamoudzou hospital is the largest maternity in Europe, with 8000 births per year. The police aux frontières – border police, affectionately known as PAF – are always watching the coastline to stop immigration as soon as possible, but they can’t be everywhere and plenty of people get in. When they are caught, the police unceremoniously dump them in boats, where they are taken back to Anjouan, the nearest island (about 35km), wherever they originally come from. Which is also why you have to be careful with your identity papers, as somebody with no papers – whatever their origin – is taken to Anjouan. Anjouan is probably the poorest of the three remaining Comoros islands.

Clandestine immigration happens through boats known as kwassa-kwassas. These boats charge 1000€ per crossing from Anjouan to Mayotte, however many people are on the boat. Therefore, people tend to pile up as much as they possibly can onto these boats in order to share the cost. They’re not very big boats – originally designed for about ten people, they arrive on Mahorais shores carrying roughly fifty or so people. People get hungry on the crossing, which can last for several days. They get tired, they fall off. They fall ill. Mothers either jump off to save the space for their children, or throw young children over the side to save themselves. Boats capsize and sink, drowning everybody aboard. The seabed between Anjouan and the north of Mayotte is littered with bodies. Children arrive alone, which is why there are so many abandoned kids in the streets and so many children taken in by other families... or left to fend for themselves, often spending days with nothing to eat, hunting in the bins for food and anything that could double up as a plaything. One of the first things we saw upon arriving in Mayotte in August was a group of young children playing in a bin. They're eventually sent to school. And we dole out little crosses and detentions because they haven't brought their books in or because they're not paying attention.

On the positive side, however, my inspection two weeks ago went well. The inspector had a couple of things she wasn’t happy with, but the general summary goes as follows:

“Mrs Cooper is a dynamic, passionate and smiling teacher, who communicates the taste for learning the foreign language to the students, who express their joy and satisfaction throughout the lesson. The teacher is also actively implicated in the life of the school as the organizer of the Big Challenge (national English challenge pitting kids of the same level against each other throughout France and its overseas territories) and the leader of a drama project. The quality of her professional competence is the sign of a very satisfying entry into the profession. I wish her to always follow her educational mission with the same enthusiasm.”