Many of you know that we have been helping Joe*, a member of my Central African family, through school. In English terms, we started helping him in grade ten and he just completed grade twelve. Due to the incredibly poor level of education in this country, we moved Joe from a public school in Berberati to a private school in Bangui, the nation’s capital. This was no small task as, while he had a good family support system in Berberati, he did not know a soul in Bangui. It is like taking a kid from the backwoods of Mississippi and plunking him down in New York City with a small budget to fend for himself. His first year in Bangui was a little rough, but got decidedly better as he learned what it took to live in Bangui (thus we increased his budget), Joe learned to live by a budget (something very few people here or elsewhere know how to do), and he made friends with those who could help tutor him. Students who were fortunate enough to have had several years in a private school were far better off than those coming from public school where you may have one teacher for eighty students and no text books. Imagine doing grade ten, eleven and twelve math without a textbook. Impossible!
Though Joe has technically graduated grade twelve, for which we are very proud indeed, the largest hurdle remains; the baccalaureate certificate. We don’t really have an equivalent to this in Canada, but in the French system it is the evidence that you graduated and are fit to go on to University or to look for a job. It involves taking a very large exam in one of many different ‘series’ depending on which courses you focused on in high school. The series you choose to write determines to some extent what you will go on to study in University. I admit that I do not fully comprehend the system, but I trust that the Central Africans do, even though it is a French imposition.
There are ‘technically’ no fees to write the BAC as I understand it, but nothing ‘technically’ works in this country, so ‘informally’ there are very large fees to write the BAC. It is generally understood that the time of year for writing final exams is the time of year that officials in the Ministry of Education get their ‘Christmas bonuses’ if you catch what I am saying. Even though Joe has gone to a private school in which corruption in minimized, the BAC exams are administered by the State. In order to ensure that your exam is properly marked there is a very large few required, unless of course you happen to have family members in the ministry. At first I thought that this was some way of ‘buying’ your diploma, that regardless of how well you did or didn’t do on the exam you were passed. What I have come to discover is paying a BAC fee doesn’t guarantee you will pass; it only guarantees it will be marked. Of course this is all second hand information from students and parents because you can’t ask ministry officials to tell you the truth, they will only tell you what should happen, but doesn’t.
So we are left in a quandary. Many people have helped Joe get to this final stage of his education and it would be such a shame for him to not receive what he has worked so hard for. If he doesn’t get his BAC this year he can try again next year and the year after that until he finally succeeds, but I worry that each progressing year it gets harder and harder to remember calculus, chemistry and physics. I had a hard enough time during my classes. I would not have been able to right a test on it one year later.
Greasing palms, Christmas bonuses in July, slipping something under the table, it is all just another way of saying CORRUPTION. And I of all people know about corruption, the way it keeps economies going while at the same time keeps them from ever functioning properly. And it is always the ones at the bottom who suffer from it the most. Central African Republic has been labeled worse that a failed state, a “phantom state” by the International Crisis Group, and the more time I spend in Bangui the more I understand why. So given that it is a failed state, that even if we wanted to go through proper channels to avoid corruption, the proper channels don’t exist, I am left wondering what to do. The July bonus for a BAC is around $400 USD. I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this so please comment here or write to me at spoiledfornormal@gmail.com
*I have changed the names of people in order to protect their privacy. I will use the same name throughout so please write me if you want to know who they really are. If I know you, I will tell you.
