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Text by Louis Vigneault. Read more on UNICEF’s website.
Salomie Kieah is one of many six-year-old children starting school this month in Liberia. After a final adjustment to fit her new uniform and a stop at the stationery shop to buy supplies, she is ready for her first day in primary school.
Salomie was born in 2003, a few weeks after her country restored peace following 14 years of conflict that killed, wounded and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. She is among the first class of first-graders to be born in peace here in many years.
But Salomie’s aunt, now 18, had to flee with her family during the war and missed three years of school. She is currently trying to catch up with her education. It’s the same story for many Liberian young people. Only one in three schoolchildren is studying at the traditional grade level for his or her age.
Even in the lower grades, the age gap is present. Most of Salomie’s classmates will be older than her, because children must be able to read and write when they start first grade – and very few parents can afford to send their children to preparatory school.
Salomie’s mother lives in the United States and sends money to pay for her education at a private school. At $50 per year, this option remains out of reach for most families in a country where 84 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Liberia is now enforcing free and compulsory primary education in all public schools. With limited government resources to build new schools, however, the public school system is overwhelmed by new enrolment.
According to Ganta District Education Officer David N. Kehzie, 8,700 primary school students were enrolled in the district last year. More are expected this year. He says four new schools are needed to accommodate new students.
UNICEF and its partners are building a new school in Ganta as part of ‘Learning Along Borders for Living Across Boundaries’ initiative, which uses strategic education interventions to help advance development in post-conflict Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
The child-friendly public school in Ganta will be able to offer free primary education to about 270 new students in a few weeks. But classrooms for many more children will have to be built.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recently called for more international support and investment in primary education.
“Young children today feel that they can have a future that they can be safe” she said at a press event in Monrovia. “This is the first time that six-year-olds will go to school not knowing war, not having to run, not having to hide. Those children see life in Liberia as normal. We must continue on this path, so they can become adults in a normal environment.”
6 Comments
superb photos. but you have to read the unicef supplied text closely to see that salomie is in a private school and not a regular government school or a unicef supported one. The text mostly tells us about government and particular UNICEF supported schools. but the pictures are only of private. Why is that? These pictures don’t show aid supported schools in Liberia. What would pictures of such schools look like?
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I think KFC makes an important point. Your last photo shows 4 happy kids in an notherwise empty classroom.
I presume this was before or after call. Where are all the other children. I visited a UNICEF supported school in Burkina Faso a few years ago and there were 212 children in one 1st year classroom. ONly 2 teachers for all of them. The children were literally sitting in eachothers laps. Private school situation is better, but classes are still overcrowded and children don’t get the attention they need. Hence, they don’t learn as much as they could/should.
Unicef likes to show pretty pictures of their acheivements, but I find it is often an unfair embelishement of the reallity
On a different note, your photos are fab as always.
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You both make good points, but, both points weren’t the point of this story. This story was about kids starting school who haven’t know war in their lifetimes, not classroom overcrowding.
I too have been to many, many overcrowded classrooms where kids don’t learn as much as they should, but I find this is much a variable of region as it is public versus private. For example, even the private schools I saw in southeast Liberia were incredibly overcrowded.
As for pretty pictures that show achievements, UNICEF also takes plenty of photos they call “advocacy” photos that show not so pretty scenes. I don’t take these photos as much because I think one of my personal strengths as a photographer is not heart wrenching poverty, but people living their lives however they can, wherever they can.
Ideologically, it’s important to me to take these kinds of pictures since so few exist, while another type of photo certainly exits in abundance. I don’t think it’s a straightforward dichotomy, but if you think of it as a continuum, I like to believe that I’m more on one side of it near the middle than on the other side.
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Beautiful photos.
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this set is wonderful and, as you say, it portrays a particular life and story, unseen before. or at least, not with this quality
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As a Liberian, I must commend you for these wonderful pictures depicting some normalsy in the life of ordinary Liberian kids.
Please keep it up as much as you can, it is the side we never get to see.
thanks,
G. Casely de Bong Jr.
678-479-4717
mambapoint@msn.com
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