Education in the Central African Republic – May Mission OfferingEducation in the Central African Republic – May Mission Offering
The mission offering is collected at the church doors at the end of worship.
Education in the Central African Republic
Greetings from the CAR!
Displaced Persons in Bouar, CAR (Central African Republic)
In the Central African Republic it does take a whole village to educate the children—a village plus outside support, such as our Mission Offering for May. What does the village do? It provides thatched buildings (rooms, really)—2 classes per building—with rough wooden benches and writing surfaces. Villagers provide housing and a garden for the teachers. The village parent/teacher council runs the school. Our companion synod, the ELC-CAR, chose villages without any state schools for the Village Education Project. The schools are open to girls and boys of all faiths. Those who pass state exams at the end of the sixth year are eligible for public high school, if they can afford the fees and have a relative to live with in a town where there is a high school.
How do our mission offerings support village schools? It costs about $20 per student for a year. The money goes toward text books (shared, not individual), teacher salaries, sports equipment, teaching materials, supervision of teachers by the Village Education Team, training Parent/Teacher Association members to run the schools, new teacher training, in-service training of teachers and more. 
Our offerings also support secondary education of young women in the Maigaro Vocational School and the high school in the capital, Bangui. Girls selected by the Lutheran women’s organization receive scholarships.
We also support the education of adult women through programs at the Martha and Mary Women’s Center, where classes in literacy, sewing, cooking, and health and nutrition are offered.
In the month of May, let us all pray for our brothers and sisters in CAR and give what we can to keep opportunities for learning open in that land-locked nation in the heart of Africa.
by ELCA missionaries Reverend Joyce & Ian Graue,
This month we are going to let you read someone else’s mail!
We have translated the two letters below from French to English. Neither letter was sent with a stamp on the envelope and neither passed through a post office; there are no post offices in either place. Both letters would have been carried by several people between sender and receiver, often on a ‘taxi-motorbike’.
The Village Education Project is approached by leaders from many villages. So the village of Koé is not unique. It is important that the project, however, be realistic in what it can and cannot do and that it not spread itself too thin, i.e., beyond what it can do with both personnel and finances. The Village Education Project relies on gifts from ELCA congregations, Sunday schools, individuals, etc. It no doubt will be impacted by the economic crisis that is affecting so many. The project, however, will continue to do its best.
Pray for the Village Education Project team.
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by Pastor Joyce & Ian Graue, ELCA missionaries, Central African Republic
“I’d like to dance for you, but I need to ask my husband’s permission. Can you come again on Tuesday?”
We knew that we would have to do some juggling of what was already on our schedule that day, but we couldn’t refuse this invitation from Abdullah’s mother.
I don’t know her name. I know her simply as “mama ti Abdullah” because that is how others call her.
She is young. Perhaps 20 years old. She is beautiful. She is Muslim. We could see the excitement in her face when we arrived on the Tuesday afternoon. We had said that we would come and we did. This meant a lot to her. She arranged with someone to take us to where the dancing would take place and then she went to change her clothes. Next we saw her, she was wearing a beautiful white skirt and top and she had a turquoise scarf wrapped around her head. Her husband had given her permission to dance for us.
Since the sharp rise in the level of insecurity in 2006, Abdullah’s mother is also a statistic. She is an IDP: an “internally displaced person”. She is in a camp near Bouar with other Fulani who were frequently being targeted by rebels and highway bandits in the Central African Republic. Sometimes Fulani men and children were taken hostage and their cattle then had to be sold to pay the ransoms. Sometimes in the encounters with rebels or bandits, people were wounded; I was shown many scars on arms, legs, shoulders and backs, especially scars from knife wounds. Among the 42 IDP families in the three camps near Bouar that we met at a recent distribution of food by the World Food Program, I spoke with a man who twice had to ransom his son. I met a young girl – now an orphan – who is 9 years old and living with grandparents: she would like to go to school, but there is no money. I met a woman whose husband and sons were killed by the bandits and the rest of her family fled and she has heard that they are now living in an IDP camp in Cameroon; she would like to join them, but has no means to do so.
We met Abdullah’s mother at the food distribution. As the distribution of food came to an end, we asked her if we could visit the camp and see where she lives. She was delighted that we wanted to come. A time was arranged for the following afternoon. She was so happy to see us when we arrived … and she was really delighted when I gave her a photo of herself that I had taken the day before.
She showed us the grass house in which she lives with her two small children. We also saw the grass house where her husband lives. [Culturally the men and women do not share the same house.] We saw the ‘houses’ of others in the camp as well. Grass tied together for walls and more grass for the roofs. These IDPs do not live in fenced, designated areas; no one has given them tents or containers of clean, drinking water or other supplies. Their only assistance during this whole time has been some food – flour, oil, salt, dried beans or peas, and sometimes some sugar – from the World Food Program. It was before we left the camp that she said that she wanted to dance for us, but first had to ask permission of her husband.
In recent months, security has been improving in CAR. But Abdullah’s mother and these other IDPs do not feel safe enough to return to the areas where they had grazed their cattle previously … and now there are so few cattle left besides.
But they dance. And they sing. And they hope.